Aural Fixations

AFI
Sing the Sorrow
(DreamWorks)
It ain't easy being punk rock heroes to thousands of kids. When your music touches so many hearts (or brains or genitals or whatever), you may find yourself cleaved to breasts with iron grips, as if each fan was intoning the mantra, "And I will love him and hug him and call him George..." Such devotion is to be commended, but can lead to traps. On one hand, it's extremely tempting to just give the people what they want, over and over again, never changing, never evolving, simply going through the motions knowing they'll love you for it. On the other hand, if you do have creative ambitions beyond exploring the intricacies of inertia, you may suddenly find your audience abandoning you—a sobering thought if you've been loved and hugged and called George.

But a true artist, as has been reiterated on this site time and time again, must follow his/her/their own muse, regardless of consequences. Sure, it would be easy to go by the book, the one written on the first or most popular record, but then it would get boring, which would lead to indifference, which would to lead to sterility, which would probably lead to the audience forsaking the artists in droves anyway. If the artist is true to him/her/itself, he/she/etc. avoids such a sinkhole, experimenting, going whichever way the whims indicate, trusting in the audience to follow the music down whatever path it may lead. A true artist believes in both creative autonomy and the audience.

AFI is a true artist. The California quartet started as teenage punk rockers, garnering a loyal following with its bratty speed punk on albums like Very Proud of Ya and Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes. But as the bandmembers matured, so did their tastes and talents, and slowly new elements were introduced to the sound. In particular, traces of Gothic rock became evident, skirting around the edges of albums like Black Sails in the Sunset and the breakthrough The Art of Drowning. But other sounds have worked their ways into the band's music, and now, ten years after it initially formed, AFI finds itself growing far beyond the punk label with its first major label release Sing the Sorrow.

The opening track immediately serves notice that this is not the AFI of old. "Miseria Cantare - The Beginning" (as if the title weren't enough) starts with ambient electronic noises best experienced with headphones, before drifting into a symphonic synth wash and a huge drum sound. A familiar shouted chorus of "Love/Your hate/Your/Faith lost/You/Are now/One/Of us" contributes an anchor, but guitarist Jade Puget's mournful, melodic metal runs would sound as at home on the more atmospheric portions of a black metal record than on a punk album. Then comes frontman Davey Havok's distinctive keen: "Nothing from nowhere/I'm no one at all," and the album is back in familiar, morbid territory, at least lyrically. But longtime fans expecting to rip through a melodic but forceful opening number may be a bit shocked by such an orchestral statement of purpose. (more)

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