When AFI completed the tour cycle for their 2021 album Bodies, frontman and songwriter Davey Havok found himself confronted by the band’s own accomplishment. Having created an album that, at that point, represented a diverse and furious blend of chemistry and creative fulfilment, Havok grappled with not knowing if whatever came next could propel AFI forward.
For a band known for continuously finding a spirit of reinvention across over three decades, a scenario where this sense of reinvention felt unsure was one that Havok admits was daunting.
“I didn’t know where we could go, that we hadn’t gone before,” he says, musing on AFI’s journey towards making their 12th album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun….
“It’s always necessary for us to be moving in that new and fresh direction, in order to be inspired by what we’re making. In order for us to enjoy what we’re making, there has to be more. There has to be new feelings, and I didn’t know where they were going to come from.”
To combat these feelings of uncertainty, Havok proposed the idea of a “mood record” to AFI – a different way of writing for the band, where the focus would be on a singular mood, as opposed to letting myriad emotions, ideas, and influences fly within the studio.
This more structured framework unlocked a new dynamic in AFI’s songwriting and musicianship, ultimately leading to an album that feels both nostalgic and fresh within the band’s expansive catalogue.
Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, with its dreamy-haunting swells and Cure-esque romanticism, feels like an AFI album that has been born out of a desire to push further into the unknown and embrace a new sense of drama in the music.
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With a bed of references that surely must point to bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, Bauhaus, and Sisters of Mercy, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun grapples with themes of dystopia, a constant battle between good and evil and ultimately, finding the light in times that remain hellbent on writhing in the dark.
But the album, while revelling in doom, is also fun. Threads of vibrancy find themselves woven through this tapestry of sounds – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… is a record that, clearly, AFI and Havok poured the utmost passion into.
Havok smiles as he talks Rolling Stone AU/NZ through the album during a late-night call. It’s evident that this era of AFI is one he is intensely excited to share with fans; for him, this is an album that has so much of his heart and soul attached to it, that it’s almost impossible for him to detach from.
“My relationship with this album is very unique and it’s hard for me to actually articulate,” he explains. “I’ve never experienced creating any record where, after its creation, I can hear and listen to it as if I weren’t a part of its creation, and enjoy it fully.”
“I love this record so much. It’s so much a part of me, it’s entirely me. It’s entirely honest, entirely organic. The writing process was smooth and so fun, so fruitful. It turned out better than I could ever have imagined, yet when I hear it, I can also enjoy it in a distant, satellite, remote way.
“You won’t be able to go back and hear me say that I have an issue with a [AFI] record. Every time we put out a record, we always put out something that we are happy with and that is very true to us at the time. Yet even those records, by the time they’re done, I don’t want to listen to it! I like it and I’m happy to perform it, but I don’t want to listen to the record. That’s not the case with Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… – every time I listen to it, it’s a fucking pleasure for me. That has never happened to me before.”
From the band’s beginnings in hardcore, through to ambitious dives into punk and alternative rock through the 2000s, AFI have always thrived on their ability to shape-shift through different genres and musical bends. For Havok, his personal journey as a songwriter has run parallel to the evolution of a band as a whole.
Balancing nuance and intimacy with brash and beautifully dark perspectives, Havok has long-been regarded as one of the most distinctive voices in alternative rock. With Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, he admits his own relationship with music and songwriting has been redefined.
“Something that was really unique for me and really gratifying, satisfying to me, was that with this record, I knew I wanted to do something that was appropriate for the direction we were going in. I wanted to do something that was also vocally very different from what I’d done in the past,” he says.
“I began to attempt to do things that I hadn’t traditionally done within the context of AFI. Those things are very much a part of who I am artistically and a part of my upbringing, so it was a joy to be able to get them out within the context of AFI.”
“Additionally during that process, I realised early on that the way I was intending on writing these songs… I thought I might be able to write full bodies of lyrics and come in and sing them in full as intended,” he furthers.
“It’s something I’d only attempted once in the history of AFI. Probably at the first AFI practice in 1991. I wrote all these lyrics, I thought I was going to come in and sing songs… it didn’t work that way. I was sad because I’d worked so hard on all these lyrics, then I had to throw them away! I learned from that. I kept notebooks with little concepts and lines and stanzas, but never full songs. On this album, I was able to show up and sing full songs. That inevitably would add to the delivery of those songs, because they’re complete ideas on my end.”
Havok still holds the music of his youth tenderly, owing much of his — and AFI’s — approach to their craft to the bands they came up on.
Maintaining a constant emotional connection to their work, and realising the impact it stands to have for fans – both new and longtime alike – is a quality that stretches back to the band’s teenage hardcore beginnings.
Inspired by bands like Minor Threat and their local hardcore scenes, AFI’s first steps into music-making were made with a united desire to create music that felt primal and kinetic.
“[Hardcore music] was the only tangible form of music that we could ever consider making,” Havok says. “We only considered making it because of the D.C. scene and the LA scene. It was like… just do it. Even if you can’t play it, it doesn’t matter; just do it. For me, emotional hardcore, the hardcore that opened itself up outside of just pure angst and aggression, was always the most impactful to me.”
“This is religion,” he adds. “This is the truest religion, is art. That’s what we’re here for. The rest is bloodshed. Human connection is all we have, and that is art. The bleakness that is this record, the healing in and of itself is not expressed…you don’t hear the light, but you feel the light. It’s in the medium. This is what we’ve got. It’s the clarion, it’s the siren, as it’s always meant to be. But in these times, these Black Sun times… it’s fucked up. We have what we have in the moment, and we’ve got to pay attention to it.”
Havok is excited for the album to potentially bring new listeners in but beyond that, he can’t wait to explore the new possibilities creating this album has brought him and the band.
“The dream [is] that this would be someone’s first AFI record, because the algorithm does not want that to be the case!” he laughs. “I think about that, and it’s harrowing to know that we don’t have any control over it. We can’t direct towards this, it’s out of ours and everyone’s hands. If young people would be able to hear this, that would be fucking cool.
“It’s been nearly 35 years now. What’s even better is that, towards the end of the process of making Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, we went somewhere else. What you’re hearing on this album, we’ve even evolved from there – I know there’s more to come.”
AFI’s Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… is out now.
