Funeral Diner – The Underdark (2005)

From the shelves

By the mid-2000s, the screamo wave had already started collapsing under its own weight. Too many similar bands, too many interchangeable records, too many watered-down acts. Pushing the envelope was now an exception rather than an urgency. Funeral Diner were my favourite of those exceptions.

When ‘The Underdark’ came out in 2005, it didn’t exactly feel like a reaction to the scene, as they didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. The ingredients were all there: the fury of post-hardcore, the emotional charge, but the way they were put together was quite personal. Some moments leaned towards post-rock, others hinted at indie sensibilities, yet nothing ever diluted the impact. If anything, such an approach made the record stronger.

Funeral Diner had already built a reputation through a string of releases — 7-inches, splits, a previous full-length — often in limited editions that quickly disappeared. By the time they reached ‘The Underdark’, their musical language had expanded. When I spoke with drummer Matt Bajda in 2006, he was quick to confirm: “As you play more and more and see different bands, you bring new ideas into your own music. Everyone in the band has wider tastes now, and that comes into the songwriting without fear”.

Furthermore, he described the album as something that had been mapped out rather than assembled: “The intention was to make it very cohesive, something that could be listened to as one long piece. Each song was written in accordance with a feeling, then placed where it would best fit the mood”. Indeed, ‘The Underdark’ is better experienced as a whole, rather than dusting off this or that tune.

Sure, it has some wonderful peaks, but as a single body of work it’s much more than the sum of its parts. Even the aesthetic choices pointed in that direction. The beautiful artwork, inspired by Gustave Doré’s illustrations of Dante’s Inferno, perhaps suggested a much heavier, extreme metal-leaning record — something the band themselves were aware of. “Artwork should not categorise the sound of a band”, Bajda said. “But the album is about decline in society and daily struggle, so it made sense for the visuals to reflect that”.

At the same time, the band never lost sight of what mattered to them. Touring, for example, was never about comfort or financial gain: quite the opposite. “Funeral Diner always loses money on tour”, the drummer admitted. “Not a couple hundred dollars, but thousands each. It’s not easy to say it’s done for the money. It’s about playing music you love, meeting people, and getting your message out”.

Perhaps they got to a point where going out and playing was not enough anymore, as Funeral Diner broke up for good in 2007, not long after our interview. No slow fade, no legacy tarnished: they went out on a high. The members have gone on to other projects, as usually happens, but ‘The Underdark’ remains a staple of the screamo genre, a standout release of its scene, more so than some of its more renowned and celebrated peers.

It was reissued in 2026 by Repeater Records: a well-deserved chance to shine again.