Review Summary: Amazing new album by AFI with a completely new direction.
AFI stands for "A Fire Inside". But it could stand for "A Forever-changing Identity" due to the diversity of the band and how they change through the years. At first they were a hardcore punk band, then also became horror punk. Then they started to play some alternative rock and post-hardcore as well. The last album "Crash Love" was more of alternative rock. This album features a completely different sound from AFI.
While Davey Havok's voice is still identifiable, it does sound a little more older while in some tracks such as "Wild" and "I Hope You Suffer" it sounds more gruff. Like the previous album, he is only singing on this album. Despite there is a couple of tracks with like one old-school rock-tinged scream used at one part of a song for about one second. Jade Pugent will be playing some punk rock power-chordin' off songs like "17 Crimes" and "Greater Than 84", but he mostly does more dark atmospheres on a majority of the songs as well as a lot of power chordin' when the choruses come while Hunter Burgan plays audible, yet dark bass lines that perfectly match the tone of the album's songs. While the verses have more dark, gothic atmospheres and singing, the choruses are a little more anthem-friendly and have a little bit of possible influences from pop music coming from the 1950s or 1960s or 1960s soul music, which also influenced the punk band
The Ramones. However, the choruses aren't poppy and neither does punk tend to be overly poppy. However, there is a little bit of anthem-friendliness in the choruses which might imply that pop music (not the modern or auto-tuned stuff) from the 1960s or so would have influenced a bit of it.
The most noticeable thing about the album is it's change in the band's style. It's got some alternative rock-tinged songs like "Wild" or "The Embrace", the one very industrial rock-tinged song "The Conductor" and then a few 1970s punk-tinged songs such as "17 Crimes", which sounds sort of like a blend between
The Clash and
The Ramones as well as "Greater Than 84", which has a very post-punk feel to it. However, most of the songs are more of gothic rock instead. Take a song like "The Sinking Night", "I Hope You Suffer" or "The Face Beneath the Waves" which all have some very dark, haunting and sometimes slightly gloomy atmospheres and they sound a ton like 1980s goth rock legends such as
The Cure or
Joy Division along with some anthem-friendly choruses. The lyrics of this album are probably the most darkest, most Gothic lyrics AFI have written. They're probably even more darker than the ones off their horror punk songs such as "Total Immortal" for example. They got songs that reflect many personal things, anger, love and other stuff.
Overall, this is a very good AFI album. It mostly has a gothic rock sound to it. If you listen to 1980s gothic rock and alternative, you'll probably love this.
