AFI – Burials

Another Resurrection

Cailfornia punk rock favorites AFI have seen many iterations in their nearly 25 years as a band, and with their ninth studio album, Burials, they have reached into the darkest depths of their bag of tricks, sounding more like an ’80s goth band than their punk origins. It often happens that when a band has existed for this long and has gone through such a stark maturation as AFI, their later records lose the soul of their music that gained fans to begin with. With this new record, though, Davey Havoc and gang will satisfy their long time fans as well as entice many new ones with their all-grown-up sound.

Burials starts with “The Sinking Night” which sounds like it was ripped straight from a Type O Negative album– a heavy goth atmosphere that is rarely emulated in music today –setting the dark, ambient tone for the rest of the record. Their much beloved “punk with a Hot Topic twist” sound hasn’t been completely abandoned, though, as seen in songs like “17 Crimes” that calls back their earlier albums. Burials closes with “The Face Beneath the Waves” which sounds like A Perfect Circle playing in a doom-y atmospheric metal band and provides a dystopian end to this dark, complicated record.

With their constantly evolving and growing sound, AFI has enchanted fans for years, always giving their listeners something new and interesting to listen to with each record, and Burials is no exception. A fantastic mesh of all your favorite goth and new wave bands updated to match the current musical climate, with enough flamboyance and intrigue to stand out above the other bands attempting this sound, Burials is sure to bring in hoards of fans– old and new– and is hopefully a sign of things to come.