Davey Havok – Vocals
Jade Puget – Guitar
Hunter Burgan – Bass
Adam Carson – Drums

“Crash Love is certainly not a concept album or rock opera by any
stretch, but the songs are generally connected by a greater theme…
The album title itself can be construed as a command, as a destructive kind
of love, or as a desire for a relationship that’s heading inevitably
toward disaster or flameout. The lyrics of some songs trace an arc from
adoration to the desire to tear down the object of affection. These songs
are written from perspectives both sympathetic and critical, as well from
both the inside the relationship and outside.”–Davey Havok

Crash Love, AFI’s eighth full length studio album, due out September
29 on DGC/Interscope, is indeed informed not only by the ever-evolving chemistry
between the musicians in the band but also by the members’ personal
lives and perhaps most of all by the always intense relationship between
AFI and its fans. The latter has intensified considerably over the most
recent of AFI’s 18 years as a band, with 2006’s decemberunderground
entering the chart at #1 with first week sales of nearly 200,000 and subsequent
sold out shows at the Long Beach Arena and Bill Graham Civic as well as
appearances on Saturday Night Live and at Live Earth–not to mention
2003’s Sing The Sorrow going platinum. These experiences were bound
to have an impact on four kids from Ukiah, California who formed a rudimentary
punk band in 1991 with aspirations of playing in the SF Bay Area and possibly
releasing a few singles and an LP or two.

“The record is really more about how the great attraction to inappropriately
shared intimacies, carefully constructed personas, and the loss of a sense
of self can affect an entire world,” Havok explains. “As well
as how this loss of self is sought after rather than resisted… With
today’s media, we have such quick and pervasive access to the trivia
of anyone’s lives. Everything is intensified and indulged, this desire
and ability to know everything you possibly can about anyone, from what
thread-count bedsheets they sleep in to whether or not they believe in ghosts.”

While Crash Love is the first AFI record to feature such prevalent sociopolitical
and observational perspectives, the darkly personal AFI lyrical strain is
distinctly present on standout tracks like “Medicate” and its
stark portrait of a user/enabler relationship, as well as throughout the
ill fated death ride scenario of “End Transmission.” Elsewhere,
the newer approach shines on the self-explanatory “Darling I Want
To Destroy You,” “Veronica Sawyer Smokes” with couples
Jade Puget’s Smiths-esque guitar signatures with a tale of heartbreak
brought on by disappointment with a teen idol, “Beautiful Thieves”
with its privileged characters whose actions carry no consequences, and
“Too Shy To Scream” which sets yearning, distanced adorations
against the backdrop of a drumline-inspired shuffle propelled by Hunter
Burgan’s bass and Adam Carson’s drumming.

Crash Love, it has to be said, features AFI’s Puget, Burgan and Carson
playing at their most focused and direct. Where Sing The Sorrow and decemberunderground
saw the band’s compositions increasingly steeped in atmospherics that
created a moody-heavy realm that often threatened to engulf the songs, Crash
Love is, according to Carson, “the sound of the four of us playing
in the same room. It’s by no means stripped down but you really hear
the band. Sing The Sorrow–and to certain extent decemberunderground–gave
us our first experience with big budget recording, which led to some really
dense arrangements, electronics, overdubs and so on. Not that there’s
anything wrong with that, but this time we came in with 14 songs we were
playing really well and wanted to capture that energy.”

Having entered the studio with fully formed and woodshedded songs, Puget
and Burgan were freed to come up with novel approaches to each of their
instruments–reducing their dependence on strings, keys and other embellishments
both organic and electronic. Following a writing process that Puget recalls
taking “the better part of a year,” the band convened in late
2008 with producers Joe McGrath and Jacknife Lee to begin work in earnest
on what would become Crash Love. “We don’t jam,” Puget
explains. “But we had the material so completely formed by the time
we began recording that we were able to do things more on the fly this time,
to concentrate on sounds as well as performance, to contribute anything
that worked, that made a sound that was interesting. So we ended up with
sort of a ‘Shabby Chic’ recording aesthetic: The sounds we came
up with separately could be really rough and abrasive but assembled together
they created an end result that was really beautiful.”

Carson adds, “Personally I’m more interested in the way AC/DC
sounds big: Tones that are really big but don’t necessarily need a
stadium, that sound just as big in an 800 capacity club.”

Carson speaks from experience. Having co-founded AFI with Havok in 1991,
he’s seen his share of clubs that size and considerably smaller.

Within a year of forming, the original AFI lineup pressed up about 200
copies of the split 7-inch Dork with fellow Ukiah High students Loose Change
(of which future AFI guitarist Puget was a member). A smattering of singles,
EPs and compilation tracks followed, as did the early AFI albums Answer
That And Stay Fashionable (Wingnut, 1995) and Very Proud of Ya (Nitro, 1996),
all showcasing a youthfully exuberant, often sophomoric East Bay hardcore
punk style that began to cultivate a following as the band hit the road,
playing virtually anywhere in the world that would have them.

The first hints of AFI’s more diverse and mature current direction
would appear on the band’s third album and first to feature Burgan
on bass, Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes (Nitro, 1997) and the subsequent
A Fire Inside EP (Adeline, 1998). It would be one more year, however, until
the present AFI lineup and sound would truly coalesce with the addition
of guitarist Puget and the release of fourth album Black Sails In The Sunset
and the All Hallows EP (both Nitro, 1999). Another year later, fifth album
The Art of Drowning (Nitro, 2000) would provide a breakthrough, as the fully
realized and unmistakable AFI sound already having built a following in
the hundreds of thousands, would receive its first taste of mainstream exposure
as that record’s “Days Of The Phoenix” found its way onto
modern rock playlists.

With sixth album Sing The Sorrow (Dreamworks, 2003), AFI made an exceedingly
ambitious leap forward, enlisting co-producers the late Jerry Finn and Butch
Vig and expanding their musical palette in all directions: First single
“Girl’s Not Grey” represented the band’s most infectious
“pop” moment up to that point and became a bona fide hit, while
live favorite “Death Of Seasons” incorporated pounding industrial
rhythms and mournful choruses before dissolving into a cacophony of screaming
anguish. Elsewhere on the record, “Silver And Cold” provided
bittersweet balladic verses that exploded into an irresistible chorus, while
“Leaving Song Part 2? and “Dancing Through Sunday” showed
the familiar AFI chant-along choruses to be as fierce and frantic as ever,
even while couched in increasingly sophisticated musicianship.

As with AFI’s previous surges forward, their dedicated legions of
fans made the leap with them as new ones joined in droves: Sing The Sorrow
sold in excess of one million copies in the U.S. and “Girl’s
Not Grey” won the 2003 MTV2 Viewers Choice award. Critics joined in
for the first time as well, with best of 2003 accolades awarded by the likes
of the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, GUITAR WORLD, SPIN and REVOLVER, as well
as from longtime supporters ALTERNATIVE PRESS.

“I was completely in awe then and still am now,” Burgan recalls.
“It all seemed to have come naturally from our efforts and honestly
that’s really hard for me to comprehend.”

The band was stunned yet again when the sixth AFI album, decemberunderground
(Interscope, 2006), released on 6-6-06, stormed into the U.S. album chart
at #1, selling 182,000 in its first week and unseating the Dixie Chicks
from their multiple week perch atop the charts. Also produced by the late,
lamented Finn, decemberunderground yielded the band’s biggest anthem
to date, “Miss Murder,” which went on to be named #7 in ENTERTAINMENT
WEEKLY’s 10 best songs of 2006 and #15 in ROLLING STONE’s 100
best songs of the year. Other decemberunderground tracks that instantly
assumed fan classic status alongside longtime AFI fan favorites included
the frigidly beautiful “Love Like Winter,” the hyper aggressive
“Kill Caustic,” and the infectiously melodic “Summer Shudder”
and “The Missing Frame.” decemberunderground went on to sell
over a million copies, providing AFI with its second consecutive platinum
album, as the band sold out venues on the level of California’s Long
Beach Arena and San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Center, made its
debut appearance on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and played the New Jersey installation
of 2007’s Live Earth festival.

The members of AFI readily acknowledge the debt their success story owes
to their fiercely local following, The Despair Faction. AFI and The Despair
Faction have long enjoyed an intimate relationship that goes beyond more
conventional fan club perks such as exclusive merchandise and ticket pre-sales
to soundcheck parties regularly organized and attended by DF members who
come bearing gifts ranging from homemade AFI artwork, clothing and other
keepsakes to vegan baked goods for Havok and Burgan. “They’re
not really a fan club per se,” says Puget. “The Despair Faction
was conceived to be more interactive than that, to have more of a direct
connection with us.”

This connection was inverted and intensified with the Begin Transmission
experiment that took place during the recording of Crash Love. AFI solicited
videos from the band’s fans, each giving a glimpse into the life of
the video’s maker, with the understanding that a handful of entrants
would be chosen to contribute backing vocals to the new record. Havok, Carson,
Burgan and Puget personally went through over a thousand entries, ultimately
choosing six winners who were then notified in person by longtime AFI tour
manager Smith Puget and flown to Los Angeles to guest on Crash Love (where
they can be heard prominently on the “Flash Flash Car Crash”
refrains of “I’m Trying Very Hard To Be Here,” for example).
Honorable mention runners-up each received handmade Valentine’s Day
cards from members of AFI.

“We turned the dynamic around,” says Burgan, who was voted
Top Music Twitterer in this year’s Shorty Awards. “We looked
into the lives of the fans. Real people doing real things. It was very interesting
to see who’s out there, what they’re feeling and what they’re
doing with their lives. They already know who we are, so it was good to
get to know them for a change.”

Carson adds, “The idea was to engage the fans and make them a part
of the process. I didn’t expect to be so floored by the effort that
went into these kids’ videos of their lives. It was a great state
of the union, so to speak. And we came away from it feeling that much more
of a bond with them.”

If the quality of Crash Love is any indication, that bond will only continue
to intensify. “I am so proud of this record,” Havok concludes.
“I really believe it’s the best AFI record. It honestly feels
like we’ve made our first truly timeless record. We didn’t set
out to do that–you can’t set out to do something like that–but
it definitely feels like that’s what we’ve achieved: created
the album by which we’ll be remembered.”