AFI's Latest Gothicore Masterpiece, Decemberunderground

THOUGH THEY ARE NOW ONE of the biggest names in rock music, with the requisite platinum records and legions of obsessive, frothing fans, AFI has certainly paid more than their fair share of dues. Bursting out of the unusually prolific Ukiah, CA, punk scene in the mid-‘90s, the band toured and recorded relentlessly, signing with Dexter Holland’s Nitro Records and slowly honing their uptempo skate-punk sound into the brooding, morose hardcore of what many consider their breakthrough record, 1999’s Black Sails in the Sunset.
In 2003, the band made the jump to now-defunct DreamWorks records with Sing the Sorrow, which officially graduated the band to “big as fuck” status, hitting platinum sales and spawning an entire subculture devoted to trying to figure out exactly what the hell frontman Davey Havok is singing about. And while the band’s subsequent and latest release, the long-awaited Decemberunderground is sure to find similar commercial and popular acceptance, musically it represents another turning point for the band, offering up a decidedly more accessible, almost pop-y side of AFI. Though still rife with dark symbolism and laden with molten guitar riffs, Decemberunderground is nevertheless the sound of a band who has accepted their place in the pantheon of popular rock bands. We spoke with AFI drummer, original member and ersatz pirate Adam Carson about the process behind making the new record and whether fans are ready for the new, softer side of his band.

 
What have you guys been doing for the three years since Sing the Sorrow?
We’ve just been making a record, sort of quietly and off the map, just doing our thing. We took a couple weeks off at the end of the Sing the Sorrow tours to kind of collect ourselves, and remember who we are as people. But then we fell back into rehearsing, got some new songs under our belt and got kind of excited about them and spent a year writing and rehearsing and refining and throwing away and sort of revisiting; everything that goes into creating a collection of songs.

Was there more pressure this time around, with Sing the Sorrow being such a huge commercial success?
There probably is a lot of pressure, but there’s no more pressure than what we place upon ourselves. We were pretty happy with Sing the Sorrow. At the time, it was the best record that we had made and I’m still really proud of it. And, you know, on every record we’ve made, at least among the band, we’ve always felt that we’ve improved and that we’ve explored new territory, that we’ve really redefined what the band is. We wanted to do the same thing this time, but it was obviously a little more challenging because I felt like we made a really good record last time. I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure from media and from fans and so forth, but all of that’s small beans compared to the pressure that we put on ourselves.   

Do you think that some people, some of your fans, are going to be shocked by some of the stuff on this record, songs like “Love Like Winter” that are super melodic and pop-y?
I don’t know. We’re really fortunate as a band to have a fanbase that really allows us to grow between record. If you listen to all of our records—not that you’d want to do that [laughs]—but you’ll notice that there’s huge leaps between each record and a lot of that is based on our evolution as songwriters and as musicians, but also just our evolution as people, that’s what we’re interested in and what we’re into musically. It’s going to be interesting. I think that this record really defines us in 2006; the unique elements of AFI are still there, but I think that there’s some new ground that we’ve covered. At least for us. I’m not saying that we reinvented the wheel, but, for what we can do as a band, there are totally new dynamics and new elements and it’s exciting.

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