The openers have all been laid to rest, and the audience is growing tired of the “”Nightmare Before Christmas”” tunes that have feebly attempted to hold the audience’s attention like a featherweight undercard match before a Tyson-Holyfield bout.
Suddenly, it’s pitch black, and the crowded club fills with dry ice fog and the blaring of the chorus from gothic anthem “”O Fortuna.”” Drummer Adam Carson steps up to the kit and counts off the band’s “”Strength Through Wounding”” on the bass drum while the throngs of faithful fans scream the song’s chorus in unison:
“”Through our bleeding, we are one!””
Welcome to the show – a transcendent experience for the loyal AFI fan and a damn good live show to the most weathered of rock concert goers. AFI, or A Fire Inside, manages to leave no heart unturned with their brutally intense shows that have made their live act one of the most highly demanded in the music world.
More proof? Tickets to AFI’s upcoming April 23 show at the Soma never went on sale to the public — they were gone within five minutes during the exclusive presale offered to members of their fan club, The Despair Faction.
“”People have sneaked into our shows in drum cases and people have climbed on roofs in the rain to just get into the building,”” said bassist Hunter. “”We’ve had people fly in from other continents to come to our shows, a lot of times without a ticket. Some people will do about anything to get into our shows. It’s crazy.””
But demand for AFI’s live act has been no stranger to the band or its fans. AFI has long tried to avoid playing the Goliath venues in favor of more intimate settings where the band’s raw and emotive energy can be exploited properly. After the release of their 1999 album Black Sails in the Sunset, the Bay Area natives found themselves forced to play “”secret shows”” in their home region, jumping on the bills of bands like T.S.O.L. or The Nerve Agents, unannounced or under an alias, to allow true fans to get a leg up on the scalpers who have been known to hoard $10 tickets and turn around and hock them for more than $100 each.
And the madness has only grown more severe since the recent release of their sixth full-length album, Sing the Sorrow. The band’s newest album has seen two singles, “”Girl’s Not Grey”” and “”The Leaving Song Pt. II,”” reached top-10 request lists on alternative rock radio stations like KROQ, and the album itself reached the No. 5 position on the Billboard chart.
While Sing the Sorrow is the band’s sixth full-length release, it is their first on a major label after being on the independent label Nitro Records (owned by Offspring frontman and occasional AFI guest vocalist Dexter Holland) since 1996. In December 2001, the band signed with Dreamworks, a move that allowed the band to produce with resources afforded by a major label that were unnattainable at the indie level. Sing The Sorrow is a testament that fixing it while it ain’t broke isn’t always a bad idea.
“”It’s round, and it has a hole in the middle,”” Hunter jokes about the new CD. His modesty isn’t fooling any music fan who has listened to Sing the Sorrow. AFI has further progressed their style of post-hardcore-pop since their fourth album, Black Sails in the Sunset. It’s very apparent that the new album is polished on par with the liking of a major label, but it does not stray from the band’s staples of dark-tinged melodies, half-Danzig-half-Cure vocal stylings of singer Davey Havok and cathedral-choir backing vocals among others.
The new album features more nontraditional instruments for a band that had for years labeled itself as “”East Bay hardcore”” to describe their hardcore punk sound reminiscent of the Misfits or Minor Threat found on their Answer That and Stay Fashionable and Very Proud of Ya albums. In “”Death of Seasons,”” the band boasts a drum and bass breakdown one might hear at an industrial dance club, and the album is laced with segments of strings and piano sounds. The album is beautifully melancholic at times and charged with their traditional brutal hardcore flavor at others.
The band attributes its move to a major label in allowing the resources of extra studio time and the help of big name producers like Butch Vig and Jerry Finn.
“”It helped us to finally have an album that represents where we are creatively and artistically,”” Hunter said. “”This last production allowed us to create something as much AFI as we are.””
AFI will be stopping in San Diego on April 23 to play at Soma. Opening acts include The Explosion, a Boston punk band crossbred with the Ramones and Misfits influences, and Time in Malta, a pop-hardcore band in the vein of Thursday and Reach the Sky from San Francisco. The show is sold out, but tickets may be released by the venue on the day of the event.
