AFI (A Fire Inside)
AFI (A Fire Inside) is an American punk rock band, formed in 1991 by Davey Havok (vocals), Markus Stopholese (guitar), Geoff Kresge (bass) and Adam Carson (drums) in Ukiah, California. After doing a few live shows, AFI broke up while its members moved away to different colleges, reuniting later after an extremely successful live show during a holiday break. The eventual reformed line-up included bassist Hunter Burgan who replaced Kresge. Very Proud of Ya (1996, Nitro Records). Over the course of four following LPs, the band has established a dedicated cult following and is widely respected as one of the better punk bands of the 1990s.After the recording of the A Fire Inside EP in 1998, Mark left the band to be replaced by guitarist Jade Puget who was critical in forming the bands new sound over the following albums. Following on from the new gothic influenced approach they had taken on the afformention A Fire Inside EP (released on Adeline records) the band recorded their Black Sails in the Sunset (Nitro 1998) album on which their gothic approach was fully apparent, especially in the lyrics of Davey Havok. On this album, and the following All Hallows EP (Nitro 1999), other EPs and the seminal The Art of Drowning album (Nitro 2000) their original punk roots were still quite apparent in their musical approach. However their lastest album Sing the Sorrow which was released on the much larger Dreamworks label in 2003 displays a different musical approach which has lost the punk rock aggression entirely and connected more with its lyrical subject matter. The band continues to drift into ever darker realms, its music being described in a May 1, 2003 concert review, from the Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA) as "half Satanic ritual, half old school moshpit punk."
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