Funhouse

BIOGRAPHY 1986-2002

Funhouse was formed in the Swedish coastal town, Kalmar, in 1986,by four punk rockers with long hair. After releasing a self financed single "Tormentor" and gigs all over Sweden, they felt a move was needed to get attention to their music. The choice fell on Malmö,just across the water to Copenhagen and close to the continent.
This was in 1988. Soon they were signed to Accelerating Blue Fish, a local independent record label, who released the single "Sunset", but the planned album was never released as the band was approached by the new M&A Music Art label, whose dark wave profile was on par with the band's own style. The "Friends" EP and "Girls" album were released 1993, in addition to a number of contributions to samplers, before a change in the line-up brought a new dimension to the classic epic pop sound of Funhouse. With the release of the magnificent epos of love, trust and betrayal album "Never Again" in 1996 Funhouse became one of the leading bands in the genre of dark rock in Europe. After endless trips across Europe in an orgy of cherry wine, gin, gigs, interviews etc. to promote the album and their music they call "goth n roll" they decided to go into the studio to record a follow-up to the "Never Again" album. The idea was to release the new album with the working title "Oceans of Tears" in 1998 but something went wrong. The price of the long "goth n roll" lifestyle finally turned the studio session into a nightmare. A long break turned out to be the only cure to avoid a split. After a small change in the line-up and another studio session the fans finally got a sign and the new cd "Second Coming "was released.

"Second Coming" was released autumn 1998, a limited edition EP. all covered in a digi-pack with golden print. New label contract was signed with the German label Appollyon and a new album called "Forever True" was announced to be release in the year 2000. However, this wasn't the album everybody was waiting for, the album "Forever True" was released 2000 but turned out to be a best of compilation re-mastered but with no previously unreleased tracks. Rumors about Funhouse split up was circling in the air but suddenly you could read about a new album to be released. "Oceans of Tears" was released 2001 and this was the first step to enter the American goth underground scene, the response was fantastic -IF GOD WAS A ROCK STAR HE WOULD BE FUNHOUSE!!! but still no new songs since the cd turned out to be another best of cd, pretty similar the earlier released "Forever True" but this time meant for the US market only.

2002 on the Funhouse web site you could read about some new line-up changes, endless studio sessions endless promises about a new album... September 28 2002 Funhouse appeared on a small dark wave gothic festival called "Herbstnächte Festival" in Germany. Bearing in mind that the last time Funhouse played live was in May 2001 at a club in London, there were a lot of tension in the air and the place was crowded with people. The opening song was titled "I Care for You" and when the band came to the chorus you knew that this would be a great show, the crowd immediately started to sing along and the same thing was happen to rest of the songs. After the last encore when the fans and even the promoter was begging for more, we all understood that Funhouse was back, probably even more powerful than ever before, the new songs went straight to the heart of the fans and four weeks later the band played for the first time in years in their hometown.

The new album "Flames of Love" proves that the band is still the masters of writing dark uptempo love songs with powerful chorus even though the new sound is much darker, with more guitars and keyboard than the previous releases.