AFI Plot ‘AFI (The Blood Album),’ Release Two Dramatic Songs
After weeks of cryptic teasers, alt-rock veterans AFI announced their long-awaited 10th LP, AFI (The Blood Album), out January 20th, 2017 via new label Concord Records. The quartet previewed the record with two new songs: the thunderous “White Offerings” and dramatic “Snow Cats.”
Both tracks lean toward the anthemic style of albums like 2000’s Sing the Sorrow. On “White Offerings,” frontman Davey Havok pleads a handful of mysterious lines (“I can feel your color changing”) over Jade Puget’s trademark layered distortion. “I’ll wait for you some other night/ Dressed in Himalayan white,” Havok moans on “Snow Cats,” a dynamic piece set in 3/4 that peaks with a blizzard of Puget guitar harmonies.
Both tracks are available as instant downloads by pre-ordering AFI (The Blood Album) via iTunes or Amazon.
AFI recorded The Blood Album at L.A.’s Megawatt Studios. Puget co-produced the LP with Matt Hyde (Deftones, Slipknot).
The band built suspense during the album rollout by posting a series of video teasers (many featuring reversed audio), issuing postcards to their Despair Faction fan club and blacking out their social media profile images.
AFI fans are used to long gestation periods between albums: The band’s last release, 2013’s grandiose Burials, arrived four years after their previous LP, 2009’s raw Crash Love. But as Havok told Rolling Stone in 2013, his songwriting partnership with Puget is never dictated by a ticking clock.
“We just come from the place of wanting to be 100% happy with the works we create, rather than fulfilling some sort of demand, whether it be from a label or a consumer,” the singer said. “It’s really the modern standard of short attention spans, and it puts us in a difficult position. Quantity typically eclipses quality these days, but we can’t bow to that.”