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Okay so one of my friends has always been a big AFI fan, and I never really knew what all the fuss was about. I'd downloaded a couple of tracks which were slow and dark ("God Called In Sick Today" and "Morning Star"), pretty much how I saw the band really. But then I heard "Days of The Phoenix" between acts at a gig somewhere and Alex told me it was AFI. So I borrowed the album with "Days of The Phoenix" on, "The Art of Drowning", and I was blown away!
There's hardly any songs on the album which are slow and depressing, although looking at the titles you'd think so - "The Nephilim", "The Lost Souls" etc. Most of the songs are pretty upbeat, with a similar sort of drumming/strumming speed as labelmates The Offspring. But AFI never seem to be as commercial as The Offspring, with lyrics that are admittedly quite dark, and an image that owes a lot to goth bands and The Misfits.
The album opens with "Initiation", a 40 second long intro which bursts into a blast of noise to give way to the paced basswork of "The Lost Souls". The speed slows a little at the start of the song, as it does for "The Nephilim", but soon speeds up. "Ever And A Day" showcases vocalist Davey Havok's quieter singing voice as well as the anguished cry he breaks into for most of the other songs.
"Sacrifice Theory" is, in my opinion, the best song on the album. It gets cracking with some stupidly fast 16th note basswork by Hunter and breaks into a frenzied verse followed by an equally frenzied chorus - "Woah, Do you wanna feel the world, to taste the love? To taste the love?". The vocals in this and the next song, "Of Greetings And Goodbyes" (also a candidate for best song on the album), owe a lot to the trademark "woahs" of The Offspring, and here Davey is backed capably by Lars Frederikson of Rancid. "Smile" and "A Story At Three" don't quite hold up to the quality of the rest of the album, but the intro to the latter track provides a welcome break from the same beat which pervades the album.
Up next is "Days Of The Phoenix", which I think was the only song to be released as a single from this album (I saw the video on MTV2). Guitarist Jade Puget kicks it off with that unforgettable intro, and Davey's "Woah, I fell into yesterday" really makes the song. Unfortunately the last few tracks don't hold up to this standard, although "Wester" is still an amazing track in its own right for the sheer strumming speed of the guitar intro. "Fall Children" finishes the album, as with many of the other songs on the album, by taking a quiet start and rapidly twisting into a forceful "woah" fuelled slam-fest. The song ends with the sound of a failing wind-up music box, which is a pretty dark (but clever) way to end it.
So in short, if you like a bit of fairly fast punk in the vein of the Offspring then do go out and buy this album!
Jamie
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