AFI – Medicate

First listen: AFI – “Medicate”
Whilst I may not be considered by many to be in AFI’s “target audience” anymore, they are a band I will always have a place in my heart for. I was lucky enough to see them play in early ‘00 on the “Black Sails In The Sunset” tour at (in my opinion) the peak of their powers. I can honestly say I have never been so instantly blown away by a band before or since. It was passion it was aggression it was bodies flying everywhere… in short, it was ace!
Its easy to forget now but AFI, in the early part of this decade, really gave hardcore a shake up and inspired a whole new generation of tattooed, eyeliner wearing pretenders, which in turn helped shape the identikit “emo” image we all know and *ahem* love? today.

9 years on and 3 albums later (’00s The Art of Drowning, 03’s Sing The Sorrow and 06’s Decemberunderground) not to mention a considerable amount of mainstream success AFI release new single “Medicate” taken from their forthcoming 8th album “Crash Love”.

The first thing that strikes me about the song is how familiar it sounds, I wont go as far as to say its half arsed but a band like AFI should by now be able to knock a song like this out in their sleep, and maybe they did? It ticks all the right boxes in its genericness, Rocking intro?:Check, Shout along chorus?:Check, quiet middle eight that builds into yet another shout along chorus?:check big solo at the end for kids to impress their friends when the song inevitably ends up on the next Guitar Hero?:Check and don’t get me started on the clunky lyrics, sample line ”Can you describe what it’s like? I feel nothing.Can you feel this? Does its thing”

I guess the good news is that this is only a taster of whats to come from the new album so it remains to be seen if AFI are still a creative force or just another in a long line of bands that put an album out every few years because “its about that time to do so”. I still have my fingers crossed.
Crash Love is released September 29th.

Geoff Rogers