Decemberunderground

Well, I won't go into my car right now, but I mean, I have...

I have a CD copy of every AFI album from Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes to December Underground, so I can at least check those.

Were you like me in that once you discovered that pre-gap tracks existed, you would rewind every single CD you got from the beginning to see if there was something hidden there?

I don't think I did that with everyone, but there I feel like there was a period of time where I was doing it pretty often just to see.

Like I remember the Leaving, Leaving Song Part II.

I really remember the Miss Murder December Underground moment.

Other than that, a band that I have almost no connection to.

And I'm...

Uh, we, uh, in our old band with our friend Matt, uh, covered Rizzo in the Box, uh, so I've listened to this album quite a bit.

There are few bands with a more wild career trajectory in terms of both like where their career went, where their career is now, and like the many, many shifts in sound they've undertaken over time.

Uh, there is, I, I think, a canonical AFI sound in a way, uh, insofar that like when people think of AFI, they think of the songs that they wrote between, I'd say, Black Sails in the Sunset and December Underground.

Um, with probably pretty few exceptions for most people, but, uh, I could be totally wrong about that.

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...

And I think we were the only day in the UK that got that song, and I was singing my heart out during it.

I loved it.

That kind of turned into something else across the rest of the dates Bristol got Rabbits Are Roadkill On Route 37 Which is like a, I think it's sort of a Sing the Sorrow Off cut that ended up as a bonus track On December Underground, great song And Glasgow was the only date Where they played a Blood album song Because you got Aurelia Which is also a fucking lovely song I would have been happy with anything off the Blood album

So excited, my favourite song from the Blood album as well I adore that song And again, I didn't know that was on the table But Yeah, so exciting.