Review: AFI – Black Sails In The Sunset

AFI - Black Sails In The Sunset

When AFI began their fourth studio album, Black Sails In The Sunset, with the memorable gang vocals of “Through our bleeding, we are one!” they lit the match for one of the most explosive band trajectories ever witnessed in this scene. This would be the first LP with the now-classic lineup of Jade Puget, Adam Carson, Hunter Burgan, and Davey Havok, and featured a dramatic shift away from the punk rock sound they had explored on their earlier work in favor of a darker-tinged aesthetic. Black Sails In The Sunset is one of those gripping albums that grab the listener by the throat from the very first spin and beckons them to join in the fray. While AFI certainly weren’t the only punk band to explore a darker side to the sound, they did seem to do it a bit more flawlessly than the bands that would later emulate their career path.

This album has recently received a fresh vinyl reissue via Craft Recordings, that releases on July 19, 2024, and it includes several additional bonus tracks like “Midnight Sun,” “Who Knew?”, “Weight Of Words” and the previously vinyl-only song of “Lower It” has been added to the tail end of the tracklisting (rather than closing out Side A, as found on previous vinyl versions). AFI have re-captured our collective imaginations on this thrilling, comprehensive reissue that hits just as hard as it did back in the early summer of 1999.

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Review: AFI – Sing the Sorrow

How exactly did AFI transition from being a band that hardcore and goth kids had in their back pocket to becoming such a pop culture worldwide phenomenon? The answer depends on who you ask. Having outgrown their indie label of Nitro Records given the monumental success of their fifth studio album, The Art of Drowning, AFI were simply destined for a wider audience on their major label debut called Sing the Sorrow. This record was produced by A-list veterans Jerry Finn (Blink-182) and Butch Vig (Nirvana), and they helped the band craft some of their strongest songs to date. Much to the surprise of many record executives, and to the delight of their Dreamworks Records label, AFI’s Sing the Sorrow would sell 96,000 copies in its first week and debut at number five on the Billboard 200. This record seemed to be an unstoppable giant that both the hardcore/goth kids could sing a long to with the same audience as newer fans who liked Blink-182 and other pop-punk bands. The lead single of “Girl’s Not Grey” was a perfect choice of introducing AFI to a wider audience, and it was filled with slick hooks, great guitar work, and Davey Havok’s trademark vocal howls. The great thing about AFI’s growing audience was that their concerts would be a combination of kids from all different backgrounds coming together with the same unified feeling towards this band’s music. This accomplishment didn’t happen overnight, and yet AFI’s trajectory had quickly launched into the stratosphere.

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AFI Postpone Tour

AFI

AFI have announced they’ve postponed their tour:

Given the current challenges that we are still facing at this stage of the pandemic, we have come to the very difficult decision to postpone The Bodies Tour to the fall of 2022. With Covid cases still on the rise, we fear that we will not be able to complete the tour the way it is currently scheduled, and moving it will hopefully give us a better chance to see it through to its entirety.

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Review: AFI – Bodies

The rollout of singles from the eleventh studio album from AFI was interesting, to say the least. With a trio of dual singles releases beginning in January, and the subsequent ones to follow in February and April, there was plenty of new material for fans to dissect before the full-length album would be fully released this month. Davey Havok and Jade Puget had been extremely busy having released their latest Blaqk Audio project’s album in August of 2020, and they would later turn their focus towards the sessions that would make up the record known as Bodies. In a livestream event in April 2020, Jade Puget mentioned this latest album had been fully completed, but like so many other albums, the release date was being pushed back due to the pandemic. The material that comprised Bodies is a mixture of the sound AFI went for on The Missing Man EP, with a slight throwback to some stylistic choices found on Crash Love and the darker-toned Burials. The best part of AFI’s music is their ability to make songs that immediately sound like something they would create, yet sound unique enough to cover plenty of new ground along the way.

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