Album Review: AFI (The Blood Album)

AFI
AFI (The Blood Album)
Concord
https://afireinside.net/

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You can only lie to yourself for so long before you have come to terms with the fact your editor was right: AFI is bad and nostalgia is dangerous.

The weird, edgy style of this late ‘90s/early 2000s rock group has maintained a huge soft spot in my heart since my younger, simpler days. So, imagine my boyhood excitement when I discovered they recently released a newly self-titled album, their first full length since 2013’s Burials. Over a few days I listened to the album, and once the last song ended, my existential dread began.

With the exception of one song, each track on AFI (The Blood Album) blends together with the same guitar tones and hollow lead vocals playing over and over again. The album could have been 15 or 50 songs long and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. The only track that did stand out was “Still A Stranger,” and only because it sounded like something by Five Finger Death Punch — which only further drives home how far this band has fallen for me. Although the album attempts to make radio singles with poppier, radio-friendlier tunes (not that I can remember any of the song titles), none come close to the band’s most memorable, such as “Miss Murder,” “Silver and Cold,” or “17 Crimes.” More and more as the album progressed I wished it was as good as I remembered their old singles to be. But then, I began to wonder, were those original songs I loved even good in the first place?

Upon re-listening to “Miss Murder” for the first time since I was 11, the pristine castle of nostalgia I had built around this band was abruptly raided and sacked. After the cruel armies of reality, adulthood, and changing tastes finished taking everything “Miss Murder” and AFI ever had to offer me, they burned it all down. And in it’s burnt and dead wreckage lay the dull husk of a fanship, barely recognizable by the 11 year old who built it or the 20-year-old that finally destroyed it.