FUNERAL For A Friend are still standing as the bastions of the British hardcore scene, 14 years after they broke the bounds of Bridgend.

Life as a rock'n'roller is now a balancing act for frontman Matthew Davies-Kreye, on the one hand overseeing January's release of the seventh Funereal album, Chapter And Verse; on the other, keeping the wolf from the day by having a day job.

"I work in a record store in Newport, about a 40-mile journey," he says. "We can contain Funeral For A Friend gigs to weekends, so we can spend time with our families and do 'real life stuff', as I call it, and it's good to have that balance."

This weekend brings Matthew's band to York tomorrow night and Hull on Saturday, but then it will be back to South Wales once more.

"I've lived all my life in and around Bridgend; I love it here," he says.

"I was never in a hurry to leave, though a lot of friends get up and go to Bristol or Cardiff. For me, I'm a very private person and I live in a village surrounded by fantastic scenery. I'm away from everything and I just love that solitude."

That's not very hardcore rock'n'roll, is it, Matthew?

"It's like a walking contradiction, but that's the dual nature of music," he says. "This band is my obsession, to get things off my chest, and it's such a pure form of expression for me that I don't really think about that congregational thing of a crowd.

"I find comfort in going up on stage when usually I can't look at people in conversation, but this band has given me a confidence in my own life that I didn't have through education. When I leave my home, get in the van to do the shows, it's almost like you have to be someone else."

Matthew writes 99 per cent of the Funereal lyrics, coming up with such songs as You’ve Got A Bad Case Of The Religions, Modern Excuse Of A Man and The Jade Tree Years Were My Best. As ever he wrote the lyrics on a typewriter.

"I feel there's a disconnection with a computer," he says. "With a typewriter you have to be pretty up on your spelling; you have to be patient and focused, and it's the appropriate writing tool when I like my solitude. There are very few distractions."

Funeral For A Friend play The Duchess, York, tomorrow and The Welly, Hull, on Saturday.