The veteran alt-rockers discuss the landmark album that set the tone for the rest of their career, and why they don't like being labeled "goth punk." Full interview: yhoo.it/2kcGNgP
Holy shit, I remember seeing these guys at warped tour In Toronto after they released black sails... I went to the merch table and I was holding a copy of shut your mouth in my hands, ready to buy. Adam was working the table, he told me, ‘you want this album instead, trust me’. He handed me a copy of black sails, I gave him my cash, and to this day, still one of my favourite albums...
I think Black Sails was a piece of artistic expression separate in time and space musically from any other style that ever was or will be just like it.. truly special.
Can’t beat all albums drowning back! Legends Sing the sorrow is ok to lol 😂 after that, nah Have a look at there show at a skate park promoting black sails on RU-vid 🤘
Black Sails in the Sunset, The Art of Drowning and Sing The Sorrow are my absolute favorite albums from this band. So hard to pick a personal favorite of the 3 their all equally amazing to me.
Wholeheartedly agree. Those 3 👌 Sing the Sorrow is the most different in that group, but to me it is a standout album that sounds like nothing else, and each song flows into the next while conveying something that feels more like a movie instead of a collection of songs. It’s a masterpiece IMO.
I agree..those 3 are the best. Making fans wait for 3 years only to be greeted with miss murder and them regressing into the panic at the disco/fall out boy/mcr camp was sad.
Black Sails is one of my favorite albums of all time. I love the guitar melodies and Daveys vocals. AFI is one of my favorite bands of all time, and I love both their older and their newer stuff, but I think Black Sails is one of their highlights.
In the time running up to Burials, to quote other members of the band, every aspect of his life was in total chaos, (not to mention the fact that the band's contract with Interscope had ended) and while that was reflected in the record very strongly, his performances and public appearances were even moreso. Scary.
black sails in the sunset is such a masterpiece, one of my top 5 favorite albums of all time. in my humble opinion it is definitely their greatest album!
He was channeling Danzig/Samhain/Misfits through that era. That’s what he was listening a lot of as he’s stated in other older interviews. Nothing Goth about that.
I love how honest Jade is at the end, about labels. There are very few great, highly successful bands that don't bristle when asked about whether they are such-and-such (sub-(sub-))genre or not. I think it's because labeling things is something that external parties do. And it's necessary, I think, even if it gets ridiculous sometimes. People are never ever going to _not_ label the things they like and don't like. But when you are the one _creating_ what's being labeled, then obviously you're not going to want to accept it, nor should you.
This is an awesome segment. I hope there are other artists who are willing to do this. It would be awesome to see a band with a huge discography doing this. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying these videos though.
It's been 20 years and this album still connects me with a time in my life that I had thought was almost entirely negative and counterproductive and made no sense, but now can be positive. It was healing to hear this interview.
I learned to drop in on the Consolidated Skatebaord half pipe while listening to this album and at the same time, working at a restaurant with Mark, the ex-guitar player for A.F.I. The band was ever present in our beach skate town of Santa Cruz. So many shows and good times. And as they alluded, the needed to get rid of Mark to bring some melody into the music. But I think without Mark, they got lost in melody after this album and were never as good again. It is crazy how the stars align to make one great album.
Oh goodness. "Clavet" legit made me bust out in hearty laughter. Jade temporarily squatting in Davey's old room turned out to be a good thing. It's lovely to hear all four members talk about their progress since the early days. They never forgot their humble roots.
I knew who afi was and saw them on warped tour but my first album my brother and I bought was sing the sorrow when I deployed in 2004 to Iraq I had my family send me black sails album. When myself and the rest of the marines returned from fallujah in January of the next year afi had more fans...y’all keep rawkin
I was 20 back in 2000, working at a ins company and we could listen to music while we worked. I was into the harder rap and harder rock, death metal and hardcore at the time so my good friend let me listen to The Art of Drowning cuz he knew I liked similar punk/hardcore… i remember song after song being so well put together and really good from start to finish.Needless to say I was a huge fan ever since.. black sails is when you could def hear the start of their sound for yrs.. then starting with Sing the Sorrow you could see bits of where they wanted to go with the sound.. Decemberunderground is my fav album then Sing the Sorrow.. the sound kept evolving and the albums wer great… it’s a hard thing to keep tweaking the sound and it pay off each time, but AFI definitely did it. Lovem
This was the first album by AFI that I was old enough to get into. I was still really young when it came out, but I got into punk pretty young. Black Sails showed me how diverse punk music could be and what incorporating diverse elements into a band’s sound could do for a band. Black Sails, All Hollows, Art of Drowning, Sing the Sorrow and Decemberunderground defined huge chunks of my adolescence. I’ll always feel a sense of gratitude towards AFI for all that they gave my friends and I. Thanks boys!
1:40 I met an alcoholic lawyer in rehab, he said alcoholism is actually much more prominent within that profession than most people think, so… maybe your lawyer had a problem? Maybe not though, maybe he just liked to get into fist fights, but that seems a strange pastime for a Porsche driving lawyer.
I don’t think it was a MASSIVE change, but it definitely had noticeable changes in the sound in terms of diversity of influences being apparent, AFI definitely became a stronger band musically with Jade’s Addition (pun intended). But more than that the album had this atmosphere that was quite different from the albums that came before, and I think that’s why a lot of people couldn’t quite put their finger on what made the album feel so different to previous outings; it wasn’t one or two specific things, it was the overall sonic architecture.
I’m too young to remember them playing hardcore punk, but when I got into them and got their back catalogue I knew what they were and they were hardcore punk. Visual Aesthetics don’t affect the genre of music auditorially.
I feel so lucky to have stumbled in AFI at the Paris theatre in Portland. Shut your mouth open your eyes I think with the casualties. I remember being pissed when I the fourth song on black sails came on and it was slow. Lol. Oh what it would become. Watching the transition over the following years as I’m getting older and the music was getting more hot topic… I hope they’re having fun and making money. Huge part of my adolescence
black sails, the art of drowning, and half of sing the sorrow and shut your mouth comprise the greatest back to back to back albums of all time. AFI is a once in a generation band.
I have been listening to you all for sooo long. My kid is 28 now and she was so little when I discovered you guys 😮 you still look like 20 year olds. So do I. Better than the Golden girls generation 😅
I love this. Black Sails is in my top 3 favorite albums. I will say though, right when I'm getting really annoyed with the subtitles, it said "fishes of mercy" and now I'm dying laughing 🤣🤣🤣
Davey looking like the hot topic version of daniel levy. Their best album. I stopped caring about them after art of drowning but I still listen to black sails all the time as well as the all hallows ep art of drowning and the son of Sam album. Basically all the stuff from daveys misfits/samhain phase
Asking for it > a fire inside.. But both are good. Davey is criminally underrated as a singer and even more so as a writer. As a teen I would read lyrics to afi while listening to their albums and had a thesaurus in my right hand lol
Haha !! Not many people remember Asking For it.. Lol, I had a shirt from those days with big blue letters that said AFI. This girl in my class asked me what it stood for, & without a beat I said "American Fingering Institution" .. never seen someone so offended in my life !!
I miss black sails and art of drowning AFI. Their the band that really got me into punk rock. I was listening to like Korn, limp bizkit, silverchair, 80’s rock, and the offspring. I heard AFI and everything changed for me. I wouldn’t really call black sails goth punk. I always looked at it as hardcore punk
Damn you must have been a rich kid lucky you. No kid I knew ever had more than a few coins in their pocket. CDs were like 18 bucks back then which for us might as well been 1,000. At least you had good music taste!
AFI was playing the Glass House venue in Pomona, California with Sick of it All the early 2000's, can't remember the exact year that I saw this show but this is a true story. Shortly after AFI took the stage, some idiot decided to take a fire extinguisher and shoot it all over the place while thrashing around the mosh pit/stage area. Smoke filled the entire small venue and I will never forget what Davey Havok said. He yelled, in a very nasally high pitched voice: THANKS A LOT DICKHEAD! NOW I CAN'T BREEEEEEEEEEATHE! AFI then left the stage, and the show was postponed for at least 45 minutes while the smoke cleared, and the guy who set off the smoke got punched and kicked for screwing up the show. I am not sure if the show actually got to finish as I left after waiting 45 minutes, but that was hilarious to hear Davey Havok being so pissed off.
Motorhead got called Heavy Metal.. Speed Metal.. Thrash.. Punk.. Lemmy classified Motorhead as rOcK 'n rOlL .. 😀🎸 He would say "We're Motorhead.. We play Rock And Roll!" And the show would begin! .. 😎 AFI get labeled many things.. Just go listen and rOcK out and forget the labels.. 😀👍
Jade's right; I've literally never heard a band respond to 'genre' labels positively, ever, like no band wants to be put in a box (which makes sense) but I mean, genres have to come from somewhere, right?
I know many artists who aren't bothered by such trivialities. They just play what they like to play and don't worry what people choose to call it, as long as people still show up to their shows. Let it go.
This is a band without a genre tag. They are sort of like Siouxsie And The Banshees, started out punk but matured into something brighter and more diverse.
Damn Davey just referenced The Nerve Agents. Completely forgot about them. One of the heaviest Punk bands. Havok even appeared on a few songs with them.
Black Sails is my favorite AFI album. AFI was at their best with this album and the art of drowning. You can definitely hear the changes when sing the sorrow came out and it was after that is when I didn't really listen to their newer material. I just didn't care for where they were taking their music, but it's not bad music, in my opinion, just not my taste.
It's crazy just how purely punk and psychobilly the roots of AFI are. Nerve Agents, Tiger Army, AFI..those guys were all killing it in the scene and coming up at the same time. I never understood why AFI got less credit than the others.
The whole "goth" term was something everyone else starting calling a whole group of people. When I was young (in the 80s), my mom would even ask me to classify myself and I refused. It's not just a band thing or artist thing; the "goth" community is an open group of people who are kind, intelligent misfits. We are the hippies of our day.
