Reviews

If the band Great White ever taught us anything, it’s not to light off fireworks in small, inexplicably overcrowded nightclubs.  If the band Great White ever taught us a second thing, it’s “once bitten, twice shy.”  After Sing The Sorrow came out and disappointed like a motherfucker, there was no way to get excited for the follow-up Decemberunderground.  This actually was a bit of a blessing in disguise, as with no expectations there can be no giant letdown.  Even with that in mind, Decemberunderground is a generic genre-hopping exercise in throwing excrement and observing the results.
 
The disc opens with Prelude 12/21, a techno infused attempt to capture Art Of Drowning-era AFI’s knack for memorable chants.  But “kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep” is no “through our bleeding...”  Things brighten considerably with Kill Caustic - the best song on the album.  This song sees Davey whimper vulnerably and scream like he’s auditioning for Shai Hulud while Jade, Hunter, and Adam hold it down with immaculate playing and great production.  Twelve songs like this and Decemberunderground would be worthy of it’s impressive opening week numbers.
 
Miss Murder comes on next, and it is awful.  It’s catchy in a dumbed down American Idiot way, but as an AFI song, it makes no sense.  “Hey Miss Murder”?  AFI used to have amazingly literate lyrics.  What happened?
 
Summer Shudder is catchy like a Cure song, but once again the chorus is downright laughable.  “Under the summer rain/ I burnt away.”  The out-of-nowhere dialing a phone sound effect is really strange too.  All in all, not a bad song.
 
The Interview is a really nice relaxed song that sometimes dips too close to cheeseball territory, like “pray for rain/ lose your name/ and watch all your dreams fall through,” but it’s really too long.
 
Love Like Winter comes and goes and Affliction comes on.  Finally a song that if you heard it for the first time you could honestly identify it as AFI.  Davey tears through it with an admirable rabidity, except for the sweet choruses, but even those end with a throat shredding scream.  The second best track on the album.
 
The Missing Frame really goes along well until it turns into a Franz Ferdinand track with the indie-dance drum beat comes out of nowhere and confuses the listener.
 
Kiss And Control shows that Davey and Jade just couldn’t wait to put out Blaq Audio and decided to throw lots of techno drum beats anywhere they could.  Adam Carsen is a great drummer, but I guess he just doesn’t have that mmmm tssss rave vibe.  Davey does do some great hardcore screams towards the end though, but only after a trying-too-hard spoken word breakdown.
 
The Killing Lights reads like a drag queen’s lament. 
 
37mm brings back the techno in a big way.  When Davey says ‘your sins into me,” I actually long for Sing The Sorrow just a little bit.  The end of the song is cold and artificial, robotic and repetitive.
 
Endlessly She Said attempts to be an epic closing statement, something that will sum up the forty minutes preceding, but given that the eleven songs before it are such a mixed bag, it doesn’t really mesh well.  Plus, ending the album on Davey breathlessly sighing “endlessly,” is well, a bit too much.
 
Not a bad record, but one that could have been written by any band.  Whatever AFI meant to a small group of people two or three albums ago has been swept away by a desire for great acceptability.  Decemberunderground is a superficially engaging album, but there just isn’t any depth to any of the songs.  It’s all sheen - a well produced but ultimately hollow effort.  And let’s not even talk about the livejournal-esque vagaries at the end of each of the song’s lyrics.  They should have left those rotting on the internet where they belong.