Crash Love

But it just didn't feel quite crystallised.

The next album, actually, ironically... crash love which is my one that i would not really bother with personally that actually has a more sort of crystallized conceptually tight sort of theme running through it and where they really lent into a lot of 80s stuff and there's a lot of sort of smithsy stuff on there curie stuff on there But I just think it's lacking songs.

I just don't think it's got big enough songs on it.

And I know people point to like Beautiful Things and Medicaid, which still get played a fair bit.

And then I listened to it and I was like, ah, you know, I don't know if like, maybe I'm being a bit harsh on it.

You know, what I would say is I don't think it's great.

I don't think it stands up next to, I think everything that comes after it, and everything that comes before it i still feel like i prefer those things overall but i don't maybe think that crash love is quite the absolute stinker that i used to have it penned for so i'm not fully back on board like you know like you said there are people that are like staunch defenders of this album and i'm not sure i'm a staunch defender of this album but i think maybe it maybe it is better than i possibly have given it credit for in the past i will say that okay so i listened to it and i thought i don't really want to pick that so i've got to find something else to pick and i sort of went back to the debut album from 1995 aren't saturday fashionable very proud of you shut your mouth and open your eyes i actually think shut your out your mouth and open your eyes which isn't is an interesting sort of deviation between where they would go on black cells and where they were on that that kind of very early skate punk stuff i but i do think the songs aren't great on that record i think that is maybe their weakest record and i include crash love in that i thought it would be a little bit harsh to pick one of the first two punk albums even though i would suggest that they're not really essential at all so i've sort of had to think outside the box of this one a little bit mel and here's what i've come up with My thing to avoid is the 2007 live album, I Heard a Voice, live from Long Beach Arena.

That's a

Um, yeah.

Yeah so AFI's return to the UK here The last time they had been in the UK Playing shows at all Was in 2017 Off the back of the release of the Blood album Which is now a couple of albums ago They toured a support slot With Deftones In front of crowds who By your report did not give a flying fuck About seeing AFI in front of them And they played a show at Download that summer as well Which I imagine can't have been too drastically different I suppose I was not present at either of those things The last headline shows that AFI did in this country Were for the Crash Love album When they toured here in 2010 Off the back of that Apparently after that The kind of response It's a kind of phenomenon with AFI across the board Crash Love really like Damaged them like it really sank Their profile and they were flying so High commercially off the back of December Underground And having this murder and all those things And then Crash Love came out and I don't know Times changed their star Fucking absolutely collapsed Just at that particular point in time I imagine for a confluence reasons but they have described that period as being just a very bad time for them in terms of like trying to engage an audience basically and bad shows across the board there from what I gather in terms of again audience response and you know attendance and all that kind of thing and so off the back of a bad UK crash love tour that was under attended whatever they decided it just wasn't worth coming back here for a long long time until I suppose demand increased back up enough again which they have decided is is now so uh the first uk afi shows in nine years the first shows in front of a headline crowd in 16 years and this is what happened this week first was announced the uh all points east outbreak appearance um but that was never going to be enough was it so adding a headline run of shows around there as well sam you got to see him in london and manchester i saw them in manchester and mark you here saw them up in glasgow as well and all of the uh i'll speak a little bit and we can talk about the the differences and this is i think we can say now unapologetically for people who are listening right you've heard what we've said about afi and how long we've been waiting this kind of thing this is unapologetically a conversation we are about to have for the afi nerds we're going to talk about ins and outs of like songs swapping in and out set lists and all this kind of stuff if you're you know you don't really care about that fine but let us have our moment this is this is an indulgence yeah Because I know there are people in our audience who are feeling the same Who have also been able to pop their AFI cherry this week We have had our little community AFI You know, gestation period That finally was able to give birth To a beautiful AFI baby In this particular week So we are going to be unapologetically nerdy about this And talk about the differences that we all have between our shows And that kind of thing But collectively, that experience of Just a sigh of relief Of like I have now seen AFI After being like It's like an itch that you couldn't reach For fucking 15 years Or whatever And finally you've been able to itch it I think that is how we all felt

100% and even though I have seen AFI before but the circumstances of that means the 10 year wait was more frustrating to see them again because I did go to one of those Deftones shows where they were supporting but because of the company I was with who didn't care about AFI and didn't care about being there on time to see AFI I got into the venue for Deftones saw the second half of Silver and Gold and then Miss Murder And I was furious.

I...

so magic.

I was hanging near the back the whole show with two of our mutual friends.

And the three of us have such different... favorite areas of afi like they'll be like oh i like black sails the best and then the other one will be like oh the gothy stuff i like that and i'm like crash loves best you guys know nothing um but like just like that opening and all three of us who are there for like specific different songs we want to see just arms around each other screaming along like it was just so joyous and so Like, a core conversation.

Like, just so many emotions coming out.