crash love review

so its a monday night and i'm knocking down afew drinks with sean. while his enjoying watching home improvement i'd thought i'd write a review on an album ive been trying to get out there for awhile - afi's crash love.

afi (a fire inside) is a post-hardcore/emo band. three years after the release of afi's previous album, decemberunderground, comes crash love. crash love offers a new sound compared to previous albums such as sing sorrow and decemberundergroud - its a straight ahead rock record. although songs in previous albums had glimpses of achieving this decemberunderground failed to identify its sound with a mix between both new afi and old afi sounds.

afi faced heavy scrutiny from hardcore fans being labeled as 'sell-outs'. often when bands change their sound it is because of usually the same reason - they've had enough of their old shit and they're becoming more mature. obviously fans dont understand that when a band becomes popular that they've been what they are like 10 years prior (with the exception of justin bieber and every 12 year old pop-star). afi's sound has been changing ever since black sails - bands should feel good about making money with new sounding music rather than making money of the same shit they know is going to sell records. at the end of the day if the music is good i'm going to buy it regardless if previous albums were different sounding. afi still keeps their witty and often scary lyrics but has changed the sound to much cleaner guitars without distortions. lead singer davey still keeps his michael jackson moans and drummer adam carson still keeps his off-beat drum fills, all the same but just this time its better produced.

crash love has two stand-out songs 'medicate' and 'beautiful thieves'. both offer insane guitar riffs and strong lead vocals - these two songs definately pull the album to success although songs such as veronica sawyer smokes and too shy to scream are great and both offer awesome guitar riffs and vocals it just lacks appeal to me because it becomes to repeatitive and often because the greatest "skipped" song on my ipod after the 2minute mark.

afi continues to keep what many bands fail to do - they're live performances. they sound exactly like the album and no energy is lost from what i hear through my headphones to what i hear through the amps at soundwave. they've kept whats real and their music is still continuing to evolve - im excited to hear whats next from them i just hope i wont have to wait another three years to hear it.

oh, and a picture to keep you amused. i noticed this is becoming the new blogging trend.

cool bananas.
max