AFI- Crash Love

[Pooshie]

I am an AFI fan. In probably one of the more common sense of the word. I have bought every single album they have made at launch date ever since I've known them, I've learned entire albums by heart, I have went back and purchased useless vinyls of their "Answer that and Stay Fashionable" era (Where they were a bit too obsessed with Tarantino). I bought my -first- electronica album because 2 of their members decided to make a side project, although I will admit I have yet to listen to Hunter's solo stuff (He's still in the band, just made a side project as well).

If anybody still doupts my liking of this band; here's the kicker: I've listened through Davey Havoc's old band's entire album: Son of Sam. That's fucking dedication (It's horrible and repetitive).

So naturally, I bought Crash Love on release date. This is Afi's... 7th regular album I believe, not counting the Singles and side projects.

The Sound
Afi has had a very steady progression in it's music. Not only could you hear their sound evolve and mature through their CD, when they had reached a point where they were comfortable with the content of each song, they started experimenting (Especially with electronic effects, having very famous folks help them out in the process). With that said, I feel as though this album is a step back in their regular progression for the first time. Where the 2 newest albums had very noticeable influences from electronica, this album focuses a lot more on solid rock. Of course there are bound to be synthetic or enhanced sounds, but they are mostly unnoticeable.
As always with this band, the guitar plays a very heavy role, yet at the same time keeps the melody very well hidden, instead focussing on broad musical elements such as the key, tone and beat of a song. Drums on the other hand play a very heavy role to compensate for this. The beats through the songs stay very sharp and complex, with fills and transitions always hitting right on cue.
What glues all this together is the singer's voice. Davey Havoc, the egomaniac standing at the front of the stage is the sole provider of the melody for this band. I was very happy with his performance throughout the album, especially since I enjoy his scremo work from Sing the Sorrow (2 albums ago) very much.
Did I forget something? I don't think so... OH! Right. Well... you don't really hear the bass much, so he did a good job too!

Lyrics
The words to the songs are what keeps me coming back to AFI and bear through a few weeks of not liking any songs on an album until I develop a taste for them. As I've said before, if you can't stand Davey's voice or choice in lyrics, then I don't blame you for hating this band.
The first surprising thing about this new album; you can actually hear words. I know, right? With a 6 album history of only adding lyrics to songs to glue the music together, you can finally (well... more or less) hear the singer's spoken words. I will say this might only be due to the fact that I've gotten used to his vocal style though. This doesn't mean that the words make sense though... in fact, they were written in a somewhat cryptic way, like any other AFI song. Granted, the themes hidden inside aren't as obscure as other songs. (For example, Days of the Pheonix had lyrics that had personal meaning to the band).

Album
Moving on to a more practical aspect of things, the album.
In an effort to sell more copies of their merchandise, it seems to be a trend now-a-days to make albums a bit more complicated than a simple case and CD. In the case of Crash Love, this is still true, although not completely. You know when you buy a fancy album *caugh*Tool*caugh* and try to store it in your CD rack and it just won't fit? Well thankfully you can buy the core Crash Love album for around 15 bucks and it /will/ fit in your CD rack. But if you absolutely want the fancy edition with a cardboard folded cover including the 4 extra tracks, well you might want to concider purchasing the special edition for 5 dollars more. The CD case itself is a lot prettier, but keeps the same pictures as it's little brother version. I've grown to be a big fan of the 4 extra tracks, so I would recommend this (I also don't have a CD rack though).

Noteable songs
Torch Song
I was slightly deceived by this one notion... after at least 4 albums (I'm not sure about the first two ones), the tradition of starting each album with a powerful, invoking song has been broken. The first song, even though good enough, is usually skipped on my end. It begins the album on a very harsh note instead of easing you in or pumping you up for the rest.
Medicate
The single, Medicate, is the album's redeemer. Not that the rest of the songs aren't good, but this one helped me force myself to listen to the album until I liked it. The lyrics aren't very cryptic, yet they sound powerful and determined when sung along with the hard rock background music.
Sacrilige
My personal favorite song. A nice buildup, followed by easily heard lyrics, a solid drum beat accented with a few guitar notes here and there. The theme of the song is probably something that not everyone would like, as it deals with general beliefs and faith in a negative ways:

Don't tell them you can walk
on water or they may drink your blood.
Why live for pain, in the name
the name of, name of Love?

Bonus Tracks
Out of the entire album, this one probably contains the most gems, which is natural, as 2 of the songs were unreleases rom previous albums (Sing The Sorrow and Decemberunderground). If I could suggest a single song for all to listen to, it would be from this CD, and the song is called "We've Got the Knife".

Altogether, I don't think any of the songs on this album have quite the impact they need to have in order to survive the test of time in fan's minds. Medicate might have potential, but that's about it.




That's about it for now. I might add some information about the album as I come up with it. I will also be making a post here after I come back from their Toronto Concert on the 10th. Peace. It's also always weird reviewing this band... because I'm never sure if I've missed the point of a song or the whole album entirely.

[Pooshie]

I probably shouldn't be doing this at work, since I told them I was sick for the past few days, but yesterday, I came back from my trip to Toronto to see AFI's concert.

I'm warning you right now, this is heavily biased.

So my sister picked me up at home tuesday morning for Toronto. 5 hour trip. Everything went pretty much without a hitch, as the place we were staying at for the night wasn't hard to find after we passed Toronto. I swear, my sister learned a lot more about me... seeing as there were two fursuits sitting on my friend's couch, and the guests that he had over were all furs. Anyhow...

We left at around 6:30 to get to the parking spot we had picked out and cabbed over to the venue. Sound Acadey. The place was right by the docks, with boats in the water everywhere. The club was big for my standards, with a full bar and huge unobstructed dance floor and stage pit. Both my sister and I had a very hard time keeping our cool, as our GOD of music was inside the same building we were in. We didn't wait in line at all, since we got there 30 minutes late, and the few hundred people that showed up were already inside.

We pushed our way to the front (Myself, Julie (sister) and Pyhrra) to get as close to the stage as possible. The first band started playing. It was a very generic sort of hardcore band, with a singer that had a lot of charisma, but was on more than just a power trip as he kept spitting down at the crowd. He eventually got the whole dance floor to make a massive circle pit in which he descended and sung while people were beating the fuck out of each other while dancing in circles. Gotta love punk. The highlight of that bad was probably when he ordered the moshers to make a human pyramid in the circle pit. On which he climbed triumphantly.

But anyways.

We waited a long time afterwards, standing in a more than dense crowd as roadies were setting up the stage. Then, the lights finally went out, and the band walked on stage and began to play "Torch Song", which is intense live, with very simple crowd parts to sing. The singer finally came on stage... Davey Havoc.

A few albums ago, the guy had long greasy hair, tight leather pants and fishnet everywhere... not the most attractive. This time, it was nice dress white dress pants, a tight black t-shirt and a jacket that matched the pants, along with a very nice haircut, almost like an overgrown faux-hawk. He was gorgeous...

I won't bore you with the details of this amazing concert. I knew every single word to most songs, an old favorite was played (This Secret Ninja), along with a lot of music from the last three albums (Sadly, nothing from Black Sails in the Sunset was played...). There were nice light shows, some visual effects during intense parts (Death of Seasons for example during the breakdown at the end, where the shadow of the singer was projected against a background) and the singer had a lot of energy throughout.

For an encore, of course the crowd was yelling out "AFI!" But... something better came out. A few, then everyone started chanting "Through! Our bleeding! We! Are one!" Which is the introduction to one of their old albums (Not everyone knew the words... and I heard some pretty funny interpretations through the crowd). They came back with a last 3 numbers, including their finale, Silver and Cold.

Anyhow, the rest is irrelevant. I will just close by saying this:

If you ever go to a rock concert and stand in the pit with a camera to film the band, I will /destroy/ your camera. Fuck they pissed me off...

All in all, the concert was very short, but God damn it was worth it. My sister afterwards got depressed, getting somewhat of a "PAFID -> Post AFI Depression". But she'll get over it. Our voices were broken at the end, and we made it back home the next day completely safe.

Fin.

[FoxyKin]

Whoa snap. My roommate is a huge AFI nerd. Loves all their music from beginning ages to end. Owns all the studio albums, and the Blaqk Audio side project. As well as Son of Sam.

He's jealous you went to that concert though. This Secret Ninja is one of his favourites too. XP

As for myself, I though Crash Love was a very interesting album. I personally enjoyed listening to it more than Decemberunderground with the direction they took themselves as a genre and theme.

[Pooshie]

Whoa snap. My roommate is a huge AFI nerd. Loves all their music from beginning ages to end. Owns all the studio albums, and the Blaqk Audio side project. As well as Son of Sam.

We don't talk about Son of Sam though... they were pretty bad.

But apparently their bassist Hunter also has a side project. I'm gonna have to do some research on that.

[FoxyKin]

Whoa snap. My roommate is a huge AFI nerd. Loves all their music from beginning ages to end. Owns all the studio albums, and the Blaqk Audio side project. As well as Son of Sam.

We don't talk about Son of Sam though... they were pretty bad.
But apparently their bassist Hunter also has a side project. I'm gonna have to do some research on that.

Yeah, something called Hunter's Revenge? We're aware of it, though all we can really tell from what we've heard is that it's Hunter going solo.
I will have to speak to him about all this! D8

[Pooshie]

I've never had so much fun getting kicked in the face since I was 15.

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