“I have always thought the term gothic to be somewhat pejorative or a misnomer at best. Growing up, I remember reading interviews with many of the bands who consistently got labeled with the G-word, wherein the members would deny the moniker. Any eyeliner-adorned, black-clad, long-banged boy or girl met with the question ‘Are you a goth?’ would typically respond with a sneer or a disgusted roll of the eyes. No one would own up to the term.” —Davey Havok, AFI (from A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box liner notes)
AFI are not goth. Not that you’d guess from their publicity photos, featuring the quartet in all their eyeliner-adorned, black-clad, long-banged splendor. But pigeonholing the sound of their seventh album, DECEMBERUNDERGROUND, is as messy as Robert Smith’s lipstick.
For starters, frontman Davey Havok utilizes so many different voices—often within the same cut—that he begs to be diagnosed with multiple-personality disorder; on “Kill Caustic,” he flips between an adenoidal punk whine and a choked howl that no cough lozenge could ever soothe. For the austere opener, “Prelude 12/21,” he adopts an eerie, tremulous falsetto to offset the martial synthesizers.
The arrangements are equally eclectic. “Kiss and Control” begins with brittle electronic rhythms and hints of hiphop, while the modern-rock smash “Miss Murder” boasts a bottom-heavy wallop and mammoth sing-along chorus. Admittedly, “The Killing Lights,” with its descending guitar figures and smudged bass, recalls the Cure circa 1979’s Three Imaginary Boys, but that’s just one facet of this disparate offering.
No, AFI are not goth. Which, of course, is a totally goth thing to say. Whatever. After 15 years, these East Bay boys have heard it all. Call them what you will, but their appeal has not been lost on millions of fans. Upon its mid-June release, DECEMBERUNDERGROUND entered the Billboard 200 at number one. And early promotion to the band’s extensive fan base—affectionately known as The Despair Faction—was an integral part of the Bumbershoot 2006 marketing strategy.
AFI bassist Hunter Burgan was just as passionate about his favorite acts when he was on the other side of the stage, back in high school. “I never had band-inspired tattoos like some of our fans do, but I attended as many shows as I could,” he recalls via e-mail, from a tour stop in Japan. “There were quite a few bands that I would drop everything to see. However, the distances I traveled to see Jawbreaker or Rancid do not compare to the distances that some of our fans travel to see us. I am completely amazed and flattered by how devoted our fans are.”
AFI are not goth. But they are not afraid to be portrayed as mouth-breathing fan boys. The Stranger asked Burgan to peruse the track list for the forthcoming Rhino Records anthology A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box (in stores September 19), and single out a few of the 53 artists featured for comment. Not surprisingly, Siouxsie and the Banshees (“she has a beautiful and truly unique voice that is as strong today as it was 30 years ago”) and Nine Inch Nails (“just when you thought that rock ’n’ roll was dead, out popped Pretty Hate Machine like the spawn of Satan”) received top marks.
But the highest praise is saved for the Cure. Which makes perfect sense, since the final cut on the Rhino set is AFI’s cover of “The Hanging Garden,” taken from the 1998 EP A Fire Inside.
“As most fans of music know, the ‘cover version’ of a song is almost always synonymous with ‘an unfavorable festering sore,’” opines Burgan. “Hardcore fans of a band never want to hear some inferior schmucks ruining their band’s magnum opus. We picked ‘The Hanging Garden’ because it was one of the few songs by the Cure (one of the greatest bands of all time) that we thought we wouldn’t completely ruin.”
The admiration didn’t end there, either. “We had the honor of being invited to play a song for the show MTV Icon: The Cure. The members of the Cure were sitting mere yards away from us, as we powered through one of their songs to an audience of their fans. Needless to say, it was a nerve-wracking experience. My palms are still sweating as I write this.” Spoken like a true fan… goth or otherwise.
