I flee to
decemberunderground. As you exhale, I breathe in the
water underground and I'll grow pale without you
The Interview, AFI
"decemberunderground is
a time and a place. It is where the cold can huddle
together in darkness and isolation. It is a community
of those detached and disillusioned who flee to love,
like winter, in the recesses below the rest of the
world."-Davey Havok
decemberunderground is also
the title of AFI's seventh album. And like much of
the record's lyrical and visual imagery, it seems
to stand in stark contrast to the name behind the
band's world-renowned moniker: A Fire Inside. Then
again, the brightest flames burn white-they just don't
usually burn so bright for so long.
The documented origins of AFI
stretch back to 1991 when Ukiah, California teens
Davey Havok and Adam Carson formed the band and released
a debut split 7" the following year with fellow
Ukiah High students Loose Change (whose lineup at
the time featured future AFI guitarist Jade Puget)
titled Dork (Hey, they were in high school). A handful
of singles, EPs, compilation tracks and early albums
Answer That And Stay Fashionable (Wingnut, 1995) and
Very Proud Of Ya (Nitro, 1996) followed in that youthfully
exuberant, sometime sophomoric East bay hardcore/punk
mode, as early incarnations of AFI hit the road and
began to cultivate a worldwide following.
The earliest hints of AFI's
move in a more diverse, mature direction appeared
on their third album and first to feature current
bassist Hunter (ex-the Force), Shut Your Mouth And
Open Your Eyes (Nitro, 1997) and the subsequent A
Fire Inside EP (Adeline, 1998). It would be one more
year, however, before the present AFI lineup would
click with the addition of Jade Puget (ex-Redemption
87) and the release of fourth album Black Sails In
The Sunset and the All Hallows EP (both Nitro, 1999).
Another year later, The Art Of Drowning (Nitro, 2000)
would find that AFI signature sound received by a
rabid audience by then numbering in the hundreds of
thousands. Yet more new AFI disciples would come into
the fold as that record's "Days Of The Phoenix"
somehow found its way onto modern rock radio playlists.
AFI would make the decision
to brave major label waters soon thereafter, releasing
sixth album Sing The Sorrow on Dreamworks in 2003.
Another ambitious leap forward for the Ukiah foursome,
Sing The Sorrow was co-produced by Jerry Finn (Green
Day, Blink 182) and Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins),
and expanded the AFI palette in all directions: "Girl's
Not Grey" would be the band's single most infectious
"pop" moment to date, while "Death
Of Seasons" incorporated lockstep industrial
rhythms and mournful choruses before dissolving into
a cacophony of screaming anguish. Elsewhere on the
record, "Leaving Song Part 2" and "Dancing
Through Sunday" showed that the familiar AFI
chant-along choruses were as fierce and frantic as
ever, even if they were couched in increasingly virtuosic
musicianship.
As with AFI's previous forward
strides, their fans made the leap of faith with them-and
then some. Sing The Sorrow sold in excess of one million
copies U.S. and the bands burgeoning live draw continued
to grow exponentially. Sing The Sorrow's success would
also provide AFI its first truly mainstream recognition,
in the form of the 2003 MTV2 Viewers Choice Award,
as well as best of 2003 accolades from the NEW YORK
TIMES, GUITAR WORLD, SPIN, ALTERNATIVE PRESS, REVOLVER
and USA TODAY-who named "Girl's Not Grey"
one of the top singles of 2003.
"I was completely in awe
then and still am now," says Hunter. "It
all seemed to have come naturally from our efforts
and honestly that's really hard for me to comprehend."
As the members of AFI readily
acknowledge, their atypical success story owes no
small debt to possibly the most passionate and unlikeliest
assemblage of fans to coalesce around any artist:
The Despair Faction. "They're not really a fan
club per se," says Jade. "The Despair Faction
was conceived to be more interactive than that, to
have more of a direct connection with us." As
such, in addition to more conventional fan club perks
such as exclusive merch and ticket pre-sales, DF members
regularly attend AFI's soundchecks, where they come
bearing gifts ranging from vegan baked goods for Davey
and Hunter to homemade AFI merchandise, clothing,
artwork and other keepsakes.
Now with the new decemberunderground,
AFI invite the Despair Faction and other fans new
and old (and yet to be made) to experience their most
accomplished and labor-intensive work to date. The
product of some two years so worth of painstaking
songcraft and performance, decemberunderground finds
producer Jerry Finn returning to provide an evolutionary
continuity between Sing The Sorrow and the new record.
With their team in place, AFI then set about the process
of writing and perfecting decemberunderground.
"There's a lot more attention
to detail on this record," Jade recalls. "We
spent a long time writing it. We refused to rush ourselves.
We took our time not just on every song but on each
guitar part, each vocal, each bass line. We definitely
didn't rush into the studio."
"Plus we had such a huge
amount of material written," Adam adds. "Condensing
that sheer volume and magnitude down an album's worth
of songs was very difficult. We could have made five
different records"
The fruit of this labor is
a record that Davey Havok is confident "should
break us out of any preconceived genres." And
even on a cursory listen, the wealth and diversity
of material backs him up from the first note: "Prologue:
12/21" is a rhythm/vocal-oriented curveball that
differs radically from the customary calls to arms
that have opened all AFI albums since Black Sails
From there, decemberunderground veers from AFI's first
straight-up vintage glam style shuffle on first single
"Miss Murder" (complete with backing chants
from the Despair Faction) to the stark and stunning
soundscape of "Love Like Winter" and the
epic suite "The Interview." The longtime
AFI faithful need not worry, as decemberunderground
features more than a fair share of familiar AFI hallmarks,
from the slash and burn of "Kill Caustic"
and "Affliction" to the balladic finale'
"Endlessly, She Said."
Of AFI fans' reaction to the
new record, Davey says, "Our fans always come
with us every step of the way. I think they recognize
honesty in our music, that this is the only way we
can express ourselves, to make music that we love.
Nothing else. That's what allowed us to make the jump
way back when and what continues to keep us going
now."
"Some artists fear change
and their fans' reaction to it," Jade says. "A
big part of our relationship with our fans is that
we do change with every record. It's expected and
embraced."
"That's true," Davey
agrees. "Our fans would probably be devastated
if we ever released a record that was too similar
to the previous one."
"Whenever we start covering
territory we've covered before," Adam adds, "We
just get bored."
Jade condludes: "As long
as you make the record you want, sales don't matter.
We have our music and our fans. Everything else is
subject to the whims of the marketplace."
Band description courtesy of
Luckymanonline.com
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