Album Rating: 4.0

Aurelia's good. feels like it could've gone bigger but it's a nice song fosure

Album Rating: 4.0

Lowkey one of their best post-STS records

Album Rating: 4.0

hmmm



Crash Love > DU > Missing Man >= Burials > Blood > Bodies



this album is great doe

Album Rating: 4.0

Blood > Bodies > Crash Love > Burials > Missing Man >>> DU

Album Rating: 4.0

DU as the worst post-STS release is wild

Album Rating: 4.0

Facts tho

Album Rating: 4.0

what's your problem with affliction nightbringer



what's your problem with endlessly, she said



what's your problem with summer shudder



what's your problem with killing lights

Album Rating: 2.0

Crash Love makes me so sad. At least they tried something with the other records but that one is just bland pop music

Album Rating: 4.0

toppest of tiers of alt rock/pop music indeed

I wish pop music sounded like Torch Song, End Transmission, Okay I Feel Better Now, Darling I Want To Destroy You, etc.

I Am Trying Very Hard To Be Here is probably my least favorite AFI song but Crash Love is excellent otherwise.

Album Rating: 4.0

So I don't hate DU or anything, I just think it's easily their worst post-STS release.

There are a number of reasons why. Firstly, I don’t like how Davey sounds on this record. I’m sure some of that is due to DU being his first record after having vocal surgery. He’s learning to sing and scream in new ways. On DU, his screams are quite high-pitched, and I just don’t like them. They sound much better again once we get to Burials and onwards. In addition, his clean singing is super nasally on DU. His tone is vastly improved in Crash Love onwards.

Next, there’s the production. To me, it sounds very flat and hollow. It lacks personality and atmosphere. While there are production issues in most records in this era (with Crash Love being the exception – its production is perfect) DU is the one where the problem feels like it’s in the overall vibe.

DU pushed the band into the more pop-centric mode that they’ve remained in since, and I like that mode, but DU feels like the least accomplished iteration of it. A lot of the hooks on DU feel less subtle and rewarding than what follows on subsequent records. As a whole, the song-writing doesn’t quite click for me. Every record that follows feels more sophisticated in its execution.

It also just doesn’t land emotionally for me. The band have said that DU was very hard to write, and I feel like I detect that. The songs are somewhat forced into shape. It doesn’t feel very natural, and some of the songs, like The Missing Frame, feel like the stray a little outside of what works with AFI’s DNA. Their broadly new wave/post-punk direction in later records feels like a more authentically AFI way to be poppy.

It's also hard to shake the feeling that the mainstream success of DU was the result of them somewhat bending their sound and image closer to the scene-core sound of the mid-2000s, and I generally hated that scene lol. The close associations there kind of taint the experience of listening to DU for me. Like, I just find the “my wrists bled” Affliction lyric really cringe.

Album Rating: 4.0

yeah i am trying very hard to be here is the only noticable blemish but idk, it's fine.



and shit ive never really had any major production/vocal complaints for DU. id argue STS was already pushing towards that scene style before it really had been strongly defined and DU just picking up where it left off (but i also was not listening to them given i was in elementary school so what do i know)

Album Rating: 3.5

Liked this more than Burials

Album Rating: 4.0

i did originally but idk, Burials feels so much fuller both from a songwriting and production perspective. this still fucks though, Burials just grew

Going in fresh and live....I never heard a song from the Blood album. I don't really like the Bahaus song for the newer stuff but I also sorta just moved on and I didn't like Joy Division the first time I heard. Ramble culture. I am going to pick off youtube "Hidden Knives."

*listening, wait for approval* ---- I actually want to hear the song once and not dork post and say I did something without even a small opinion.....this is definitely a completely different vibe. Get Hurt just chases behind. I feel that this album is the last gasp for Sing the Sorrow era? Anyhow I shall post now. Hah look at me cut my post into so many things and act like I knew it all the long.

Album Rating: 4.0

Good to get that confirmed.