"AFI Create A Classic Anthem Power With Crash Love" [Reg Seeton]

Esta es una review que encontre del nuevo disco de A.F.I y la comparto con ustedes, el link es : http://www.thedeadbolt.com/news/106334/afi_crash_love_cdreview.php

After seven studio albums, longtime California rockers AFI are back with their eighth full-length recording, Crash Love, which goes wide to fans on September 29. One of the best, still under appreciated bands around, AFI is a powerful creative collective that could have existed in any one if the previous four decades given the many inspirational layers the guys of AFI make their own on Crash Love. In fact, it's not a stretch to say AFI is an alternative '70s arena super group in Black Flag clothing, with their own unique sound and style within an alt-foundation of epic choruses, full-throttle garage speed, classic rock riffs, and deep, haunting vocals that go from 0-60 through pseudo-punk, pop, rock, and alternative. Given the Grammy winning studio lineage of Crash Love producers Joe McGrath and Jacknife Lee, who have worked with such bands as Green Day, The Offspring, Sparta, Sum 41 and R.E.M., Snow Patrol, and Bloc Party respectively, the latest Crash Love lands in a musical wheelhouse that sees AFI raise their game to the heights of their studio directors and contemporaries.

Clearly showcasing an organic course that almost all bands go through as they mature, Crash Love punctuates a more polished and honed collection of 12 tracks than previous albums. AFI isn't the same raw band with something punk to prove that early AFI fans heard from "Two of a Kind" on their first album, Answer That And Stay Fashionable. Featuring a few truly radio friendly tracks amid full-throttle fun garage and arena tunes, Crash Love retains the essence of AFI without going too far into the mainstream radio extremes of bands like Green Day. Although the higher studio production value is evident from the outset of the album, you can actually hear how AFI front man Davey Havok, guitarist Jade Puget, bassist Hunter Burgan, and drummer Adam Carson have collectively hit their stride as a band. Some people find success early while others truly come into their own later and get better with experience, age, and the right guidance.

As for the 12 tracks, although not quite to the dark diverse level of perfection of an album like Tool's Aenima, Crash Love is cohesively tight. Leading off with "Torch Song," a powerful alt-anthem with classic '70s riffs in the vane of Blue Oyster Cult with deeper alternative shades of Tool and an epic chorus on the level of any number of big rock acts, AFI comes out swinging. But with the following "Beautiful Thieves," a track that draws you into the heart of the band, and "End Transmission," which recalls the '80s with mid '90s pop combined with dark, sinful but fun, hopeful lyrics, AFI turns up the tempo as they explore the fear of heartbreak, a search for love, and self-awareness within relationships in such faster arena type tracks as "Too Shy to Scream," "Veronica Sawyer's Smokes" and "Ok, I Feel Better Now." Adding social apocalyptic commentary on "Sacrilege," AFI flexes their dramatic muscles as they explore deeper layers with the slow, heart wrenching, powerful and emotionally rich mid-'90s, Seattle sounding ballad, "Darling I Want to Destroy You." As a credit to the band and producers in terms of song selection for Crash Love and placement within the album, the single "Medicate" matches up with "Torch Song" after the faster garage tracks, with harder riffs, an epic power chorus, and more profound lyrics that bring you back to the start of the album of sorts.

The interesting thing about Crash Love is that throughout the middle of the album AFI retains a certain garage, arena energy that will appeal to alt-Indie purists while the outer tracks explore the subterranean emotional layers associated with pain and personal tragedy. In an age that has embraced the ridiculous oxymoron of pop-punk, AFI has evolved in a way that's hard to peg them into one particular category yet they exist somewhere beyond The Cure, Candlebox, The Offspring, Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, even a recipe of Marilyn Manson meets Adam Ant, which can be heard on "Too Shy to Scream." It sounds crazy, but it's true in a refreshing way. Interestingly, AFI accomplishes what many followers in today's music try to achieve but fall short of in drawing from their personal music influences to create a unique identity. Coming out of Crash love, easily one of the better albums of 2009, the guys of AFI are at their best when they're not going at breakneck speed, which, as a great example of their maturity, only enhances the diversity, ambitious epic nature, and dramatic layers of the band's latest release.

ta en español??????

si me bancan... en estos dias lo traduzco