“Crash Love,” the eighth full-length album from AFI, represents a slight shift towards their older sound, though not enough to recover fans that have grown away from the band.
On most of the tracks, the instruments are harder than anything that AFI’s released since “The Art of Drowning,” but lead singer Davey Havok‘s vocals are possibly the softest-both in terms of lyrics and delivery-the band has seen.
On “Veronica Sawyer Smokes,” Havok sings of a crush that fell apart, saying she disappeared from “the Hughes film I had scored, produced and starred in, in my mind.”
The strongest track is “Sacrilege,” in which Havok calls for people to move away from religion, singing, “I alone seem to see disgrace, as I watch these mad dogmatics govern our entire race.”
“Crash Love” is a safe album, pop enough to get radio play to reach new fans, but hard enough not to alienate any more old ones.
