ALBUM REVIEW: Bodies – AFI

Now entering their thirtieth year as a band (yes, we’re all that old now), Californian punks AFI have never been a band to stick in one place for any great length of time. Whether in their mid-to-late 90s infancy and subsequent breakout, their early 00s commercial peak, or their later career dalliances with pop rock and alt-rock, the band have always flitted between subgenres as though costume changes to the theatrics of their career. In the time since the 2017 release of their self-titled tenth album (colloquially known to fans as The Blood Album) and 2018 follow-up EP The Missing Man, vocalist Davey Havok has both teamed up with the musicians of NO DOUBT for new-wave supergroup project DREAMCAR and returned to synth-pop side project BLAQK AUDIO alongside AFI bandmate Jade Puget for last year’s excellent Beneath The Black Palms, so expectations as to where his main band would go next were anyone’s guess, right up until the announcement of said return, Bodies.

Put in simple terms, Bodies is essentially what happens when the collective members of AFI decide to fully commit to the post-punk leanings they briefly dabbled in on The Blood Album. Opener Twisted Tongues sets things in motion in fairly gloomy fashion, with a brooding melodic vocal line and the first of several trademark sing-along choruses set atop a deceptively fast-paced rhythm. It’s a solid way to ease listeners back in to the AFI experience, but of course, first impressions aren’t always the full picture.

Perhaps more so than ever before, practically the entirety of the album feels very much led by Hunter Burgan’s bass rather than any vocal or guitar hook, be it in the rumbling Peter Hook-isms of songs like Far Too Near and Begging For Trouble, the laid-back groove of Dulceria or the slightly more conventional punk-rock of No Eyes, the vast majority of what’s on offer here seems to very much push those four strings to the front as often as possible, to generally great effect.

Elsewhere, there’s hints of Havok and Puget’s other work as Death Of The Party and particularly Back From The Flesh ramp up the synths, creating electronic soundscapes akin to a slightly more po-faced BLAQK AUDIO in execution; while Looking Tragic and No Eyes both very much look to fit into Bodies’ thus far vacant ‘typical rock banger’ space, to pretty solid results (especially in the former’s case). Saving possibly the most out-there moment for last though, expansive closer Tied To A Tree takes joy in alternating between tender almost-folksy balladry and monolithic stabs of doomy, apocalyptic synth – never quite giving the listener time to get used to either side before jumping back to the previous approach across five or so minutes. It’s a gutsy way to end a record, but then again, this is a band who’ve basically made their names on reinvention and constantly having a surprise up their collective sleeve.

Yet another reinvention for the ever-chameleonic outfit, Bodies is an expertly-crafted and slickly-produced celebration of all things post-punk, filtered through that inimitable vibe that only a band containing Davey Havok could possibly hope to conjure up. With a raft of catchy-as-ever songs packed into a short but incredibly effective runtime that prevents things from ever lasting long enough to become stale, AFI have managed to pull off that rare feat of still sounding fresh three decades into their career.

Whilst purist fans of the band’s earliest punk days are likely to shake their heads at the the band who once brought us the furious likes of I Wanna Get A Mohawk (But Mom Won’t Let Me Get One) now sounding more akin to JOY DIVISION and THE CURE at their most melancholic in places, anybody willing to fully give themselves over to this latest notch in a career packed full of stylistic left-turns will likely find it difficult to not get swept up in the latest gloomy world of AFI‘s creation.

Rating: 8/10

Bodies is out now via Rise Records. 

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