Falling With Style are a young band – they are all aged under 20 but despite that have been around for about 4 or 5 years, released a couple of EPs and have already played Download Festival, in 2013.

What is it with South Wales? They’ve produced some great rock bands over the last few years: Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Funeral For A Friend, Kids In Glass Houses, The Automatic, Feeder, Bullet For My Valentine and Lostprophets (regardless of the unpleasant issues surrounding one of their members, they’re music is/was brilliant hard rock). 

MusicMuso got its grubby mitts on Falling With Style’s latest mini-album: ‘Lost and Found’, we had a listen and here’s what we thought.

Opening with a nice “mood piece” called “Pilot” throws you a bit off the scent until the opening crunch of first single “Half Measures”. It features a memorable hook and the almost obligatory screamed vocals makes the comparison with Funeral For A Friend easy but Falling With Style seem to belong in such exalted company. It’s a fantastic introduction to the band and clearly they are one of the few bands that seem to employ the screaming to enhance the song, rather than because it’s the ‘in’ thing to do.

Next up is “Deathbeds|” it opens as a double time rocker that batters you gleefully around the head with its freight train riff before slowing a little without losing intensity – despite lasting two and a half minutes the band have found time to stick in a great guitar solo.

Next is “Solace and Safety” and perhaps the first signs of a formula with its double time verse before slowing down for a chorus. That said, it probably only suffers because of the quality of the preceding track. It’s not a bad song but not as good as the previous two.

It’s followed by “S05E14” which is much more stripped back affair with a haunting guitar, minimal bass and impassioned vocals. It’s good to hear and demonstrates that the band have different strings to their bow. I wonder what the song title refers to? I guess it could be episode 14 of series 5, maybe Breaking bad or another cult TV show that has been on everyone’s radar of late.

The final two songs “Paper Thin” and “Daylight” return to a more metallic style and once again feature some more of the screaming vocals. Unfortunately, this leads me on to my issue with “Falling With Style”. I really like all the songs on this mini-album and would definitely recommend that you check them out but there is a tendency for some of the songs to sound a bit similar in style. They’re a young band though and anyone making music this good deserves your attention and support – I can only see good things for them as they develop.

Review by Adrian Grainger