A smooth well rounded bump.
AFI have always been to me one of those bands that you’re not sure whether or not you really like them, however when you put their music on you understand why they are so successful. Here with the band’s eighth studio album in, ‘Crash Love’ we have another more commercially minded album, following in the footsteps of 2006’s, ‘Decemberunderground’, and before that the mainstream success of 2003’s, ‘Sing For Sorrow’.
The album opener starts off with the mid-tempo, ‘Beautiful Thieves’ and is a familiar formula that will please fans. The hint of a guitar and deep bass lines cover the ground for Davey’s unique vocals to glide over in the verse before we have a choir accompanied chorus. In contrast, ‘Cold Hands’ unleashes the guitars out from their restraints, and they spit and spill riffs all over the place in this faster tune. It’s a catchy track, and whilst I used find Davey’s vocals painful when he hit the high notes, he now favours a few octaves lower for the most part which stops any dated sounding comparisons with Glam Rock. ‘Darling, I Want To Destroy You’, is a more thoughtful track with it’s dark lyrics, and it’s power-ballad flirtations.
From here the album seems to step up another notch, impressing me further with the catchy track, ‘End Transmission’ that has a bass line as bouncy as a playboys pair of playmates. This is clearly what bands like Kill Hannah are trying to emulate albeit with added Glam appeal. This is great stuff. This then kicks into another track fully of juicy riffs and a vocal sound a little like the successful single, ‘Miss Murder’ off of the previous album. It’s mid-tempo, with a shouting background chorus. We see that the band have matured, and understandably. The earlier Goth/Screamo has now mellowed to tracks that are more accessible, and I’m sure that this isn’t by pure accident. ‘It Was Mine’ is a timeless slow track, before the upbeat Pop/Rock of, ‘Medicate’ gets things back on track again.
If I had any complaint it would be that sometimes with the slower tracks that follow the same formula of being mid to low tempo, a gentle verse and then a hard, in your face chorus. ‘Okay, I Feel Better Now’ is a good example of this, however you don’t have two songs in the row like this, and next song, ‘Sacrilege’ had a fast paced drum beat in this quick foot-tapper of a song. Then the mix of electric noises and rip-rawing riffs and hand-clap-sounding beats are delicious in the slightly Electro-Rock anthem of, ‘Too Shy To Scream’. Next the guitars turn more Metal, mixing up the genres just a little bit with, ‘Torch Song’, before the fantastic last song, ‘Veronica Sawyer Smokes’, that with a slower beat and a different arrangement could’ve been a groovy Folk song, however here it’s an upbeat poetic tune that leaves the listener more than satisfied.
There will be a host of people that will slate this album for being too commercial. Is it? Perhaps. But that’s not always a bad thing. There is only so far you can go within a niche that has a tendency not to age well, and unfortunately the New Wave Goth Punk needed to be updated and refreshed, and arguably that is exactly what AFI have done. They have evolved whilst still keeping that darker edge. All in all, good work fellas!