AFI Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…

Loaded with David Lynch tributes and 80s goth overtones, AFI’s newest album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… is the perfect soundtrack to your darkest dreams.

It’s hard to believe that it was 21 years ago that AFI covered The Cure’s “Just LIke Heaven” on MTV’s Icon tribute to Robert Smith’s group. It’s even harder to wrap my head around the fact that AFI has been making music for 30 years at this point. Those decades have seen the band morph and change sound multiple times, but they’ve always remained true to where their punk/post-hardcore/emo/indie rock/goth hearts took them musically. With their latest album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, AFI morphs, one more time, into an amalgam of The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Bauhaus, and…well…their own sound of multiple eras.

Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…is their best album since 2013’s Burials, which was their last collection of songs that was listenable from first to last track. Strikingly, Silver Bleeds The Black Sun… is as much of a polar opposite of Burials as Sing The Sorrow was the opposite of Black Sails in the Sunset. All of these albums are united though by the band’s strong songwriting and dedication to playing rock music, albeit almost every genre of rock music popularized thus far. As their now 21 year old cover of “Just Like Heaven” foreshadowed, the band had an ear for 80s type goth, even goth-pop, and it’s no surprise that it has finally shown up in their catalogue. Also, as far as goths go, Davy Havok and the gang are no longer youngsters. At 49, Havok has ascended to the level elder statesman of goth rock, and the days of stretching his malleable vocal range to its highest points (and screams) is most likely no longer as feasible, or easy, as it was in decades past. Hence, perhaps, a hint at the origins of this latest musical turn for the band.

It’s Havok’s voice here that is the most noticeable change in AFI’s sound, outside of the acoustic guitar (strummed often in what can only be described as an homage to Robert Smith’s Spanish guitar flavored turn to acoustics on The Cure’s 1985 album The Head on The Door) that drives new tracks “Bird of Prey,” and “Spear of Truth.” Lowering his range into almost baritone territory, Havok channels everyone from Peter Murphy to Daniel Ash and ends up sounding better than both of them. “Behind the Clock,” with its delicious David Lynch character name drops, showcases Havok’s new penchant for darkened tones, and voice preserving volume swings.

“Behind the Clock” is easily the best track on the album with its nightmarish atmosphere and arena ready goth vibes. The song is, quite simply, arena goth rock at its absolute finest. The David Lynch film character references are just the icing on the cake for psychological horror/goth movie and music fans. Havok is a well documented fan of Lynch’s work, and it is only fitting that he pay tribute to one of his favorite (and sadly no longer with us) directors. As Jade Puget’s guitar fills up the song with haunting tones that coalesce around sparse yet dense power chords during the chorus, Adam Carson and Hunter Burgan emote organic rhythms that form the driving heartbeat of the song. “Behind the Clock” is an era defining track for the band, and one of their best.

Other album tracks like “Holy Visions,” and “Ash Specks in a Green Eye” are solid examples of 80s goth tribute compositions, even if they are relatively uninspired. Album closer, “Nooneunderground” is a full on Bauhaus tribute song composed of better guitar riffs and rhythms than most Bauhaus songs. “Blasphemy and Excess,” just behind “Behind the Clock,” is the album’s other standout track. Its acoustic guitar rhythms and NIN like synth moans craft an atmosphere similar to “Behind the Clock’s” dreamscape.

A fitting soundtrack to the frightening, nightmarish, Lynchian world we all seem to be suffering through currently with its slow deep panic invoking headlines, hearings, and heated shouting matches, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… at least serves, as does much of AFI’s music, as a reminder that although things often look grim, you aren’t facing them alone.