|
AFI |
| by:
Vinnie Apicella
How about a few dead leaves to go with those April showers? Indeed, one
of the Bay Area's finest Punk bands arrives about six months out of
season for their "sorrowful" new release, which in spite of its dark
wanderings, is as much a breeding ground for rejoice and renewal. Their
brood-ability remains sound, it's just the "sound" has gone from
wallowing just below the marshy Indie-Rock spent your last buck surface
to breaking the big leagues with their boldest display of power and deft
Pop persuasion to date. AFI, who some might suggest a bastard son of
what once was The Offspring, are no strangers to the underground
struggle. Now on their sixth full length, their resourcefulness results
in peak performance by all four parties involved plus the carryover
effect that an actual big budget affords, enlisting names like Vig and
Finn (Nirvana, Greenday) for an "unfashionably" slick production. "Sing
The Sorrow" is unquestionably AFI's most ambitious effort of all.
Consicientious of their Goth/Punk roots while challenging enough to play
chicken with the glut of Metal-edged and mainstreamers of an overzealous
camera-friendly mentality, the band, who've signaled on more than one
occasion, though never more so confiedently than on 2000's "Art Of
Drowning," that they are a force to be reckoned with, were destined to
outgrow the waist level pool of kiddie Punk drivel since day one. Marked
with eerie intros and forbidding chants, "Sing The Sorrow" possesses the
combined effect of pain and perseverance all in one forward motion,
where pride and progression maintain an equidistant measure of respect
for the other and in the end, everybody wins. Songs like "Miseria
Cantare" call out to the midnight brood with tolling bells and chilling
screams; "The Leaving Song Pt. II" is a memorable scene shift from then
to now. Noticeably profieicne is the quick fingered yet tender guitar
work of Jade Puget, a late coming yet major contributor to the enthused
AFI uprising, on this tranquil yet catchy one that sees an unlikely
reprise of sorts ten tracks later; "Bleed Black" and "Dancing Through
Sunday" are vintage AFI-style speed-core moments with "Oh Whoa Oh's"
drawn to full fall-like effect. "Girl's Not Grey" iimpresses as the
first single with its quick tempos and choral shout outs, where at
second glance, the question's no longer whether or not this is AFI, but
rather, when did Davey Havoc become Davy Vain? Better still, "Paper
Airplanes" or the equally deserving "Celluloid Dream." Their intensity
remains intact by displacing sheer Punk aggression for song depth and
playing dynamic, all of which should surprise no one who's heard and
followed the band through their ten plus year existence. Lower your red
flags of fear disbelievers, for the extra boost of pomp, circumstance,
and pyro-technic effects are negligible at best. Individually, AFI lends
merit to the idea of allegiance in musicality and in kind, opts to fill
little space with artfully prescient subtleties that associate rather
than dominate, in unifying a Gothic/Punk/Metal sound that few have
capably delivered until now. "Sing The Sorrow" is an emotional
bloodletter from beyond the grave that finds the songs sporting an epic
quality amidst a girth of emotional turbulence that, while singing the
praises of The Cure and/or The Smith's before them, sees the band at the
forefront of a born again Punk-like underground uprising for they and
their increasing throngs of displaced followers.
|
More from the Online Metal Journal |
|
|
|
|