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.

Those fans may be taken even more aback by "Death of Seasons," which at first blush is typical AFI thrashpop but ends up at the perfect encapsulation of the band's omnivorous approach. Havok screams "Writhing with sickness/Thrown into banality/I decay" as if he was trying to rip his own throat out without using his hands, then turns all croony over the slashing punk/pop choruses. So far so good for traditionalists—but then the bridge moves into pure techno, with synth blips and sequencers subbing for guitars and drums, before going back to anguished emocore. The tune ends in the meditative shower of a string quartet, and that's only after Havok screams "And I disintegrate" as if it was happening as the tape ran. "Death of Seasons" is probably the most audacious and, it must be said, disjointed track on the album, but it's also the most challenging to its potential audience. And that's a good thing.

Most of the album doesn't go to those extremes, but it's still miles beyond what has gone before. The ripping melodic punk of "The Leaving Song Part II," "Dancing Through Sunday" and "Paper Airplanes (makeshift wings)" doesn't so much contrast as compliment the raging power pop of "This Celluloid Dream," "Bleed Black" and the single "Girl's Not Grey." The varied tempos and catchy tunes of "Silver and Cold," "The Leaving Song" (which bears little resemblance to "Part II") and "The Great Disappointment" defy easy classification, with only Havok's passion and precision of the band's performances connecting them to the past. The final two tracks, an untitled piece featuring harrowing romantic introspection over ambient piano and an almost acoustic paean to despair entitled "This Time Imperfect," end the record on an experimental note once again. Havok's lyrics remain mired in the deepest of decadent gloom—he raises the torture of broken relationships to such an art form it's nearly sublime. The songs and arrangements shift colors and skins without ever losing the band's identity.

Credit should go as much to the performances as to the writing and arranging. Drummer Adam Carson and bassist Hunter have evolved into a most formidable rhythm section, able to shift tempos on a dime, speeding up and slowing down without breaking a sweat. Puget's wall of six-string sound possesses a high degree of nuance and texture—nothing, from crushing power chords, atmospheric swells, jagged riffs and quicksilver solos, seems beyond his grasp. Havok is in rare form, pleading, screaming, growling and, yes, singing, inhabiting his sorrowful characters like a ghost reanimating the dead, his theatrical emoting going beyond melodrama into the realm of high art. The ease in which every musician fits into the arrangements, the egoless subservience to the needs of each track, denotes a true band, with all parts contributing to the whole. Brought to bear on the finest set of songs the quartet has ever composed, AFI's performances here elevate it from great punk band to great band, period. Sing the Sorrow is the kind of album many bands try and fail to make: a picture perfect portrait of musical evolution. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Thrice, the Cure, Opeth