 "Photo: Special To / The Advocate")
During the pinnacle of ’90s to early 2000s, when Bay Area punk was typified by bands such as Rancid and NOFX, one group’s past stood definitive in the darkness that was their dissemination.
One particular release from the once gothic-influenced AFI (A Fire Inside) instilled the bearing in their preceding prevalence of hopelessness.
“The Art of Drowning” remarkably unleashed the iniquitous torments of affection as well as AFI’s general antipathy toward human existence and interaction.
Vocalist Davey Havok howled his sorrow with the relentless melodic cadence and anthemic reinforcement from his fellow band members.
When taking a listen to “Drowning” in its entirety for the first time in nearly five years, it was evidently striking how lyrically powerful and driven the album was intended to be.
AFI’s refusal to see past misery is almost akin to the likes of dismal poet Edgar Allen Poe.
Even Havok’s quietly exclaimed quote from the track “The Despair Factor,” which is a paid homage to Winona Ryder’s dialogue in the film “Beetlejuice,” is a nicely placed confection.
“My whole life is a dark room. One, big, dark room,” furthermore takes listeners into depths of an audio requiem.
“Drowning” pontificated an envisioned temporal life as an everlasting purgatorial walk through cemetery grounds.
It is utterly saddening to see the absence of that vision in their current comparable image in a now broader spectrum of contemporary showcase “rock.”
Most new fans are almost completely unaware of AFI’s aggressive poetic roots and how their widely expressed martyrdom inspired latter punk and hardcore bands of the early 2000s
Bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Bleeding Through mirrored not only elegiac similarities, but also adopted AFI’s inclination to sport jet-black attire and make-up.
Nevertheless, “Drowning” is a milestone in musical cryptic exhibition. It was what differed and defined AFI’s existence, no matter how ridiculed they were for their emotional outreach against just straightforward and predominantly counter-political punk bands of that generation.
Contact Brent Bainto at bbainto.advocate@gmail.com
3 comments
Art of Drowning = love.