Although they didn't reach platinum status until 2003, hardcore punk revivalists
AFI originally formed in 1991, when the band's four founding members -- vocalist
Davey Havok, guitarist
Markus Stopholese, bassist Vic Chalker, and drummer
Adam Carson -- were attending high school in Ukiah, CA. Chalker was replaced by
Geoff Kresge after eight months, and the band played several local gigs and released a split 7", Dork, with fellow Ukiah natives
Loose Change (a band that incidentally included future
AFI member
Jade Puget). An EP titled Behind the Times was released as well. The bandmembers then split up to attend different colleges, with
Kresge temporarily moving to New Jersey to join
Blanks 77. However,
AFI reconvened during a holiday break to play a one-off reunion show, and audience response was so positive that the bandmembers decided to quit school and concentrate on music full-time.
AFI (whose abbreviation has been said to stand for "A Fire Inside," "Asking for It," and "Anthems for Insubordinates") issued several singles before securing a record deal with the Nitro label, which issued the band's second album,
Very Proud of Ya, in 1996. Two LPs followed in 1997 -- a re-release of their 1995 debut,
Answer That & Stay Fashionable, and
Shut Your Mouth & Open Your Eyes -- and personnel shifts ensued.
Kresge was the first to leave, being replaced by bassist
Hunter Burgan, and
Stopholese departed in favor of ex-
Redemption 87 guitarist
Jade Puget, who then shared songwriting duties with
Havok. The new lineup recorded an EP titled
A Fire Inside in 1998, and issued a noticeably more mature full-length in 1999,
Black Sails in the Sunset; 1999 also saw the release of the
All Hallow's EP before
The Art of Drowning followed a year later. Though already owning a fiercely loyal core base of fans, the latter album saw the band's music attracting an even larger audience, due in part to the moderate success of the single "Days of the Phoenix." Accordingly, it was the first album to chart in the Billboard 200.
At the onset of the new millennium,
AFI hooked up with producers
Jerry Finn and
Garbage's
Butch Vig for a new set of recording sessions. The end result was the ambitious
Sing the Sorrow,
AFI's major-label debut for DreamWorks, which showcased the band's significant growth from its early hardcore days. Released in 2003, the record also marked
AFI's crossover into the mainstream, and
Sing the Sorrow eventually went platinum as several singles found airplay on MTV. Working again with
Jerry Finn (who had also produced records for
blink-182 and
Green Day), the band's follow-up release was its most labor-intensive to date, resulting from two years of detailed songwriting.
Decemberunderground,
AFI's seventh album, surfaced in 2006 on the Interscope label. The album was an instant success, debuting at number one on the Billboard charts and launching a summer-long tour, followed by a string of overseas performances in October.
While on tour,
Havok and
Puget dedicated their spare time to a side project that would eventually become
Blaqk Audio, which they debuted in early 2007.
AFI released the concert album
I Heard a Voice: Live from Long Beach Arena later that same year, but the bandmates continued pursuing their own projects, with
Hunter Burgan playing bass for several other bands while
Jade Puget did remix work for the likes of
the Cure.
AFI properly reconvened in 2008 to begin writing new material; by November, they had announced their intention to begin recording with producer
David Bottrill. Two months later, they traded
Bottrill for a pair of new producers --
Joe McGrath and
Jacknife Lee -- and continued working on the album, focusing on songs that were harder than those found on
Decemberunderground. The result,
Crash Love, was readied for release in September 2009. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide