Since a good number of people seem to be incapable of deciphering just how the hell acronyms work, it's importantto begin here by pointing out that AFI is NOT the band that plastered their updated version of Michael Jackson's"Smooth Criminal" all up in ya' ear a few summers ago. That would be Alien Ant Farm, which for some mysterious reason sometimes chooses to go by their similar (but far clumsier) shorthand "AAF." A Fire Inside, on the other hand, is an Arizona band that is generally thought to fall somewherebetween punk rock and low-profile metal.
But it always sucks when punk bands hit it big, doesn't it? They usually lose their edge. Well, don't look now, but we just lost another. AFI has abandoned their old friends and longtime supporters at Nitro Records, run by Dexter Holland of the Offspring (and don't even get me started on them).They're a DreamWorks franchise now. Their new album, "Sing the Sorrow," is definitely not the typical Warped Tour combination of an arrogantly off-keysinger and an amazingly precise everyone else. There's another influence at work behind the scenes here, but it's subtle enough to escape conscious detection and unexpectedenough to defy effective description. For lack of a more appropriate label to slap on it, we'll call it (please sitdown for this one) hair-metal. Something about the backing vocals and the rhythms of some of the guitar parts brings to mind just a wee bit of Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister. Yes, really.
But just when the parallels start to get a little too eerie and you begin to think that it might have turned to 80'ssynthocheese, the singer releases another syncopated vocal seizure that wreaks havoc upon your puny littlemisconceptions. Add to that a touch of gothic overtones -- and that's "gothic" in the "enormous-cathedral-with-huge-stone-gargoyles-that-come-to-life-at-night" sense, not in the"white-face-paint-and-pretentiously-depressed" sense -- and you've got either a promising crossover act or a bizarre niche appeal that leads to a marketing and promotional disaster. They may be playing punk rock, but AFI clearly owe more to Iron Maiden than to the Sex Pistols.
The pieces on "Sing the Sorrow" are generally a bit longer than most other punk songs. Even without including the15-minute-plus "... but home is nowhere," they probably average somewhere around four minutes. Now, those extra three minutes and forty seconds really make a difference -- rather than merely using them to rehash their verse-chorus-verse cycles a few extra times, AFI tends to put them to remarkably good use. None of this is by any means comparable to the half-hour Floydian epics, but when the end of the song rolls around, it always seems like AFI has traversed a lot more ground than their peers would have. Rather than just battering away with catchy hooks, they're using the extra time to go exploring.
In all, "Sing the Sorrow" is a failed attempt at igniting a revolutionary spark. It's almost like it's prog-punk -- rock that is obscenely simple but somehow tries to push the boundaries anyway. The album straddles the line between visionary and accessible, teetering back and forth with thereckless abandon of a five-year-old on a coin-operated horse ride outside Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, it doesn't succeed particularly well on either count.
It's hardly as though the whole affair ended up being one massive compromise, though. There are some notable (ifusually separate) successes on both fronts, and in some cases, such as "The Leaving Song Pt. II and "Paper Airplanes (makeshift wings)," the boys even manage to achieve both goals simultaneously, and to admittedlyexceptional result. The problem is that, in general, the album tries to go in two directions at once, and ends upjust pacing back and forth across the same stretch of ground. Whenever one song starts to seem progressive andnovel, the next usually turns out to be much more plain and raw. I'm not suggesting that boundaries shouldn't be broken or that conventions shouldn't be defied, but the sad truth is that these guys just didn't get it quite rightthis time.
That said, it's much more tolerable than a lot of the alternatives. Albums that are truly solid throughout arerare, and AFI has their share of what would seem to be "album filler" -- but these tracks are actually much moreworth your listening time than you might think. Some songs still stand head and shoulders (and knees and toes, knees and toes) above the others, but the "in-between" tracks will have you sitting and waiting them out instead ofhitting the "next track" button. It could be better, but then again it also could be worse.
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