AFI - Silver Bleeds The Black Sun... (Limited First Run Club Edition on White and Violet Vinyl w/ CD Sampler, Collectors' Poster and Stickers)

For more than three decades, AFI has been in a nearly constant state of reinvention. The band have made it a point to evolve with every album - sometimes dramatically so - never allowing themselves to become too comfortable in one genre or rest on any of their impressive career laurels. It’s an approach that has grown their audience but also challenged it with a sonic identity that can shift in wild, unexpected directions. Now with their twelfth album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, AFI are once again at the start of a bold new chapter, only this time they’ve even managed to surprise themselves. How does a band that’s known for creative upheaval still find ways to push themselves out of their comfort zones? Typically the group would start an album by immediately throwing themselves into writing and simply letting their intuitive musical shorthand guide the process, but for Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… AFI set out to purposely change their creative approach all together. This time it started with a conversation: how could they break new ground?

The key to moving forward actually ended up coming from AFI’s collective past. “We started with something that sounded like Echo & the Bunnymen,” explains guitarist Jade Puget, who produced and engineered the album. “But eventually we ended up with this melange of death rock and post-punk - all this stuff from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that we grew up on, like Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees.” The goal became making an album with a singular mood, something dreamy and ethereal, and the band members found themselves diving headfirst into influences that had always been deeply embedded in AFI’s musical core, but now were being brought to the forefront. “We were leaning into that post-punk world and embracing that part of our DNA, but at the same time still sounding like AFI,” says drummer Adam Carson. The result is an album that feels out of time, at once familiar and fresh, drawing on classic sounds and reinterpreting them through a modern lens. Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… is dark and otherworldly, but also grandiose and stately, biting and beautiful in equal measure - it’s very AFI, yet not quite like any version of the band you’ve ever heard before.

It’s this combination of endless creative daring, deftly wielded influences, and above all else, an unshakeable sense of self that’s allowed AFI to stay relevant for more than 30 years, often leading the way through emerging musical moments. From their scrappy roots as a high school hardcore band in the early ‘90s, to their dark punk reinvention at the turn of the century, to their crossover into mainstream stardom in the early 2000s and their years as shapeshifting alternative rock journeymen, the band has survived and thrived by staunchly being themselves—no matter what that is. “We’ve gotten to experience virtually every aspect of the music industry,” Puget says. “Whether it’s playing to 20 people at 924 Gilman Street, and underground clubs across the country, to having a number one song at radio.” No one could have predicted that the same snarling hardcore band from California’s East Bay would one day be a globetrotting rock phenomena, but there’s a fiercely independent spirit that’s remained consistent throughout AFI’s journey, and it’s that same spirit that’s led them to their new label, Run For Cover Records, and Silver Bleeds the Black Sun….