AFI

Decemberunderground | Interscope
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  June 13, 2006
3.0 3.0 Stars


SHOUT! AFI’s high-gloss, high-energy Decemberunderground is like a Rocky Horror Picture Show for screamo kids.

These long-running Bay Area goth-punks sold more than a million copies of their 2003 major-label debut, Sing the Sorrow, helping to pave the road that My Chemical Romance have followed to unlikely TRL ubiquity. On their seventh full-length, you can hear AFI trying to catch up with their young successors by blowing up their sound to even greater dimensions than producer Butch Vig managed on Sorrow. The high-gloss, higher-energy result is like a Rocky Horror Picture Show for screamo kids, with charismatic frontman Davey Havok as an asymmetrically coiffed Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Rousing choruses are AFI’s thing: virtually every song here explodes into one worth shouting along with at the top of your lungs — especially if you feel the weight of the world’s misery on your shoulders. “Can I make beauty stay if I take my life?”, Havok wonders in lead single “Miss Murder,” even as Jade Puget’s meaty guitars urge him on. In “Summer Shudder” he describes burning away under the summer rain as a sympathetic backing vocal chorus shores up his melancholy. Although they love drama, AFI never abandon believability here. Which means the arena-rock trappings don’t make the music feel fake — they just make it feel more exciting than life.

AFI + DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN + NIGHTMARE OF YOU | Avalon, 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | June 20 | 617.228.6000

On the Web
AFI: http://www.afireinside.net/

Related: Goth vs. skronk, Vampire weeknight, Gabel, Gabel, hey!, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , My Chemical Romance, Butch Vig, Davey Havok,  More more >
| More


Most Popular
More Information
AFI, "Kill Caustic" (Windows Media)
ARTICLES BY MIKAEL WOOD
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS | FURTHER  |  July 07, 2010
    Astralwerks (2010)
  •   DEVO | SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY  |  July 01, 2010
    Given the theory of de-evolution these Ohio brainiacs began expounding more than 30 years ago, it makes a sad kind of sense that Devo's first album since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps offers such a charmless, base-level version of the band's synth-addled new wave.
  •   TAIO CRUZ | ROKSTARR  |  June 24, 2010
    When Taio Cruz sings, "I can't live without you," in "Take Me Back," pop-song conventions tell us he's referring to a lover.
  •   THE FUTUREHEADS | THE CHAOS  |  June 16, 2010
    "I wish that I could stop the noise," sings Barry Hyde not long into The Chaos . It sure doesn't seem that way.
  •   BETTYE LAVETTE | INTERPRETATIONS: THE BRITISH ROCK SONGBOOK  |  June 01, 2010
    Bettye LaVette’s previous two albums had titles that required a little digging to unpack.

 See all articles by: MIKAEL WOOD