Wednesday, August 26th 2009
News: AFI
AFI Provide Medication Inside
AFI is readying a new album entitled Crash Love for a September 29th release. The first single, Medicate, has arrived.
AFI has been a guilty pleasure of mine since their semi-mainstream breakout in 2003. I know there are armies of hardcore fans that will die in the name of honor of the band’s older “punk” stuff, from before they “sold out.” But if you ask me, their earlier work just doesn’t withstand the test of time, and the band’s craftsmanship was honed no sooner than Sing The Sorrow, with Decemberunderground being a worthy follow-up.
Part of me wonders if the value of a band like AFI inflates unfairly as the collective quality of their many pop-punk-emo-metal peers bounces further and further downhill (Bullets For My Drop Dead Dying Valentine’s Remains, et al). But I’m leaning towards an instinct that says AFI is a genuinely good band that continues to develop in a positive direction. I’m digging Medicate, and looking forward to Crash Love.
Sing the Sorrow was incredible, but I think this band completed the alleged sell out with Decemberunderground. That album was shit.
I did like some of their pun/hardcore songs from before…but Sing The Sorrrow was their Magnum Opus.
This song is alright though…makes me think it’ll be worth giving the album a shot.
I just need to know where to find one of those ensemble-completing scarves. Fierce.
I haven’t seen a gayer foto since that Behemoth release, (un)fortunately I can’t listen to the track, because of the buffer race.
Don’t front on the scarf! Kanye, Jo Bros, all the cool kids are wearing them.
I thought Decemberunderground was a great album. It felt fresh in direction and sound. I thought they were really on to something. Just a good pop album that old skool AFI fans dislike cuz its not old AFI.
This track however bums me out. Bland. I can’t spend anymore energy articulating why this new track doesnt do anything for me.
While I still enjoyed Sing the Sorrow quite a bit, after that there were not many more things about AFI left that drew me to them initially. Yeah, they seem more polished nowadays, but it seems their producers/engineers polished their sound more than they did in recent years… to me at least. I thought their most emotionally compelling music happened in the late 90′s. Then again… it’s been years since I’ve listened to that now too so maybe even those songs don’t hold up that well anymore. I do know one thing. Davey Havok started off looking ridiculous and just kept on a chuggin from there. The rest of the band seems to have followed suit.
I dig AFI but their older stuff seems so much more inventive and pushes the boundaries of classification more than this stuff. That said this is still pretty good stuff. Havok has one of the best voices in rock music today.
I really love all of their work. StS was my least favorite, but still good. I hate people that call bands sellouts. Do you really want them to make “Black Sails At Sunset” over and over again? Yea, the band is less hardcore, more mainstream, but this is the musical direction they want to go in (see also Davey and Jade’s side project Black Audio, which takes the electric, highly produced, sound even further) I have a hard time knocking a group for making the music they want to make.