Funeral for a Friend’s Matt Davies Comments on Lostprophets Singer’s Child Sex Allegations (EXCLUSIVE)

The hard rock community is still in shock from the recent (Dec. 19) news that Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins had been charged with child sex offenses. The South Wales police force released his name in conjunction with the crimes in order to corroborate evidence.

Watkins has been charged with conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a female under 13 and possession/distribution of indecent images of children. After a hearing held on Dec. 31, the Welsh singer will be kept in jail until March.

Noisecreep recently chatted with Funeral for a Friend vocalist Matt Davies about their upcoming Conduit album. Since they are friends and both from Wales, we asked Davies for his thoughts on the recent arrest controversy.

"It is the same for everyone in a band. No one had any inkling whatsoever of anything like that having to do with him," Davies told us. "It goes to show that you never can tell. We've toured with Lostprophets. We've been in the same places and hung out and never in a million years would I think Ian would be that way. I think it's a massive shock to his fellow bandmates. You spend that kind of time together, but you never really know anybody.

"You wanna think that someone is innocent until proven guilty but there are so many things that have come out that it is hard to ignore, as well. You don't know what to think so you sit on the fence and see what happens. We haven't got the closeness to Lostprophets that other bands do, but it still came as complete shock."

Funeral for a Friend's sixth studio album, Conduit, will hit stores on Feb. 5 via The End Records. Pre-order the album at this link.