Long time AFI followers will be surprised with Sing the Sorrow. It's a blatant departure from their aggressive, punk-driven and seemingly hardcore roots. Yet, AFI illustrate signs of maturity and diversity with the new album.
Signing with a major label allows for a lot to happen. There is more money to play with and more experimentation to be done. AFI was able to afford co-producers Jerry Finn (Green Day, Rancid) and Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins) to grace the new album with veteran clout.
The grinding guitar riffs and mega fast drums have been replaced with melodic gallops fueled with powerful drum lines. Overall, easy-to-identify punk characteristics are gone. It's an album with supernatural strength that sounds like it's chanting to the dead. It has more of a power rock feeling with a metal edge. Old AFI is evident on "Dancing Through Sunday" and "Paper Airplanes (makeshift wings)" while new characteristics bleed into other songs..
Some of those new sounds even include industrial garnishments coupled with grinding hardcore screams as heard in "Death of Seasons."
In a lyrical sense AFI has not lost its ability to be dark or difficult to understand as illustrated in "Bleed Black." Davey Havok's vocals continue to have the power to wake demons and seduce vampires. His high pitch voice cuts through ears as cleanly as a paper cut. Havok gets to illustrate his vocal strength on songs like "The Leaving Song Part II" and "The Great Disappointment," which allow for numerous pitch and tone changes.
Songs like "Girls Not Gray" and "This Celluloid Dream" sound like they have been written specifically for radio airplay. "Girls Not Gray" found it's way into regular rotation well before Sing the Sorrow hit the shelves.
The album ends like fireworks display. A finale that encompasses a little of everything AFI has done on Sing the Sorrow leaves the listener thrown into a wall with their clothes ripped and ears smoking.
If AFI is trying to stand alone in it's own genre it has succeeded. I give Sing the Sorrow a 10 (out of 10) for sheer power, energy and raw emotion. It's spiritually dark and full of unexplainable cleverness.
AFI will be in Chicago at the Riviera on April 12, 2003. They will also be headlining this years Vans Warped Tour!
By: Adam K.Zakroczymski III - Senior Editor / CEO
March 18, 2003
