Songfacts®:

• The Welsh rock band Funeral for a Friend have had a number of comings and goings within their ranks. The lineup that recorded their fifth studio album, Welcome Home Armageddon was: Vocalist Matthew Davies-Kreye, guitarists Kris Coombs-Roberts and Gavin Burrough, drummer Ryan Richards and bassist Richard Boucher.
• Richards told the story of this sledgehammer of a song in an interview with Rock Sound magazine: "Gav originally came up with the 'This Side of Brightness' piece and we sat in my room trying to construct a song out of it. As we were doing that Matt sent us an email saying that he had some lyrics he really liked that he thought would work well over a faster/punkier melodic-hardcore track, something along the lines of the bands we grew up listening to from that genre like As Friends Rust, Rise Against and Propaghandhi. That gave us a bit of direction, the chords and melody from the intro worked really well played really fast - so became 'Old Hymns'!"