Fan, Jim, writes a very interesting article about AFI’s “Crash Love” album. He discusses it as a lost era while explaining the times and why it is so. Many of us heard Yahoo’s interviews with AFI when they spoke of Crash Love and how some fans didn’t even know about the record.
Jim (Jive) talks about this from all sides. Check out the article link below:
Let us know your thoughts on the article below - Agree? Disagree?
Always thought “I Am Trying…” was great, agree with this dude about that. Wasn’t there some contest and some fans ended up doing backing vocals on that one?
Just speaking personally, the relatively low-key vibe of this album was a good way to follow up the over the top 00’s mega popular emo/screamo/whatever, “I can’t believe AFI is this huge now” DU era. Looking back at their catalog as a whole, I think considering DU and CL together, and knowing that neither of them is AFI’s final form, makes me like them both more.
From what I remember, AFI breaking out of their setlist autopilot was the best thing about the CL era.
Yeah, they did!
This… hopefully the do this type of thing again in the future. I could only imagine being picked… I mean, damn.
@LordOfTheLeftHand I like your points with Crash Love… that is a very interesting take. I also agree with “I Am Trying…” while I do like Medicate… this song should have also been a single.
Wow! What an insightful article. I truly enjoy that album, but I can totally see how it’s not quite as memorable as their others…
There are several songs in Crash Love that I really like and I’m sure most of the fans would agree they’re great songs, such as Torch Song, Beautiful Thieves and End Transmission. People also like Ok, I Feel Better Now (not my cup of tea). My favorite song from that album is Darling I Want To Destroy You (especially the clean vocals version) but it doesn’t seem very popular.
I think the problem with this album is how different it sounds from song to song. I don’t feel there’s any cohesion throughout the album.
I remember the terrible marketing for it too. The album cover makes me want to take my eyeballs with a spoon. Remember that spammy campaign to tweet to reveal the album tracks? It was a complete failure as the hashtag was never a trending topic. They also had a website www.veronicasawyer.com with a contest to win 5 signed CDs. You had to send out links for people to check out the new album but the system to win the contest was completely exploitable (I won along with the people who were at AFI News HQ at the time - shoutout to Mary).
Also, I think it’s safe to say that wether we like it or not, AFI’s fame will never ever be as close as it was with Sing The Sorrow and DU especially. It’s nt that the next albums aren’t good, but the genre that was popular during the time they were released was exactly the genre of the records.
I’m prett sure as well that the labels haven’t supported AFI as they should. I remember reading one of the members of AFI (Jade or Davey) saying how they don’t make videos because they’re expensive to make, while I still see other artists posting their videos on YouTube getting billions of views. They just don’t want to invest in AFI for whatever reason.
Also, AFI’s marketing on the internet is terrible. Their social media and website is run by three individuals in their early 20’s who do it pro-bono, with their payment being getting private meet and greets whenever they want to see AFI. They do not have a professional, dedicated team of people willing to promote the band and their releases other than tweeting silly stuff once in a while.
I remember when I watched the video of “Beautiful Thieves” for the first time…I like it but I remember thinking…“Who’s that guy? Where’s Davey?” LOL Then I realized it was just another Davey’s look 
Then…I watched the “Medicate” video…which I really didn’t like at first…now I love it…but at that time…I was like “meh”…
Anyway…after that I bought the album and listened fully…I really liked it…although of course, was pretty different from the previous ones…
I saw the interview where Davey and Jade go like “Yeah, our friends were like…did you released a new album, really?” I felt like…“damn…what the hell? Wasn’t there any promotion of this album? People just thought it was too different to be AFI?..”
I guess it’s fine…while true fans know and love this album…I think everything is good 
I bought this album as soon as it came out, and I hated it. I listened it completely through a few times and just didn’t get into it. After a few years I went back to it and I think it’s now one of my favorites. It’s a testament to the range, ability and creativity of the band to explore such varied styles on one album. Sing the Sorrow will always be my #1 but CL is a solid second!
Interesting article. Was it really unknown to fans, though? I mean I still think everyone was so excited, anxious for another release like it was leading up to DU. I know I was, especially since I didn’t really care for DU though I eventually warmed up to it. When CL came out, I admit I was disappointed. There were a few catchy songs, but it felt like a total miss. I haven’t listened to it since the end of 2009. I think it contributed to me losing touch in 2011 and not really paying attention until earlier this year.
I so wanted to win the Begin Transmission contest. I did get an honorable mention though, which was super exciting! The mentions were supposed to get valentines from the band but Hunter never sent me one. 
I think those picked by other members got theirs?
Just because I never see anyone mention it… It’s super cool how some of the lyrics on Crash Love reference some of the lines written into the DU booklet. Off the top of my head, the line ‘I saw a body, you said you’d seen a few’ is similarly written in DU. None of my friends ever shared my enthusiasm for picking up on it but I’ve forever found it neat. 
I was 14 when it came out and I made Mum pick it up for me the day it was released in Aus. I still remember how excited I was going home to listen to it. I definitely was not disappointed. Still a favourite record of mine.
As it says, is just how the band evolved, and how people do it as well, what determines if you like it or not. But the only thing I pointed out now, is that maybe in that time, a lot of fans didn’t know about the record, but saying plenty of fans don’t know it now, is just not right.
Ps. I love Crash Love. One of my favs forever.
I guess I was wrong about this… Video of them discussing how they had fans go to shows and didn’t realize they were touring on a new album. Crazy.
There’s a series of videos of them talking about each album. Really cool to hear!
As a follow up to my original post:
Wether we like it or not, when AFI was on its highest it was considered an emo band. The emo scene was very popular from 2003-2007 and the music and even the band’s look was very appealing to the emo scene. I’ve seen countless videos of “if you liked this songs when you were a teen you were an emo” on Facebook and Miss Murder and Silver and Cold are ALWAYS on them. Wether AFI is/isn’t/was emo is irrelevant to this. So maybe if AFI released a whatever-genre-is-in-now album, they’d be huge again.
When Crash Love was about to come out, I remember Davey said on the press releases that his lyrics were more “straight-forward”. It’s been my personal appreciation that Davey’s lyrics, from CL to this day, have gone in a downward spiral.
I will elaborate: You almost needed a dictionary to know the meaning of some of the words he used, and his metaphors were so deep that we never knew the true meaning of the words he sang/wrote. You could read his words and if no one said they were lyrics for a song, you’d believe they were poems. The imagery on the lyrics from Black Sails up to STS, and maybe even DU were insane. They were far, FAR more elaborate than the newer stuff. Now, most of the newer lyrics are plain and simple. “I hope you, do, I hope you suffer, I hope you, do… I hope you suffer”. Or “And they’re barking in the wrong key. They’re barking in the wrong key. They’re barking in the wrong key. And you sing along”. “I cant let you see, I can’t let you see, I can’t let you see me sleeping”. And I must say I love Aurelia and Get Hurt. To sum this paragraph up, I think the lyrics are not as good as they once were.
I fully agree with this. Very well said.
The lyrics on AOD were amazing. I think a lot of people fell in love with them in the Black Sails to STS era because of how much depth was behind those lyrics. It was much more than just liking the sound.
I can certainly say that “Crash Love” didn’t connect with me on the same visceral, emotional level that previous albums had (including the controversial-at-the-time DU). I remember thinking it was pretty catchy, but it also wasn’t an album I felt much of a need to revisit often, aside from a few select songs - for example, “Veronica Sawyer Smokes” and “Torch Song” are two of my favorite AFI tracks.
Other than that though, I found myself playing the bonus disc more, mainly for “Fainting Spells” and “100 Words” (which are, of course, b-sides from previous albums) - those songs are incredible. My opinion on it hasn’t changed all that much, and I’d say I got more out of “Burials” than CL, even if the lyrics are indeed more simple than what one can find on earlier material. From a musical standpoint, it’s just more appealing to me.
I pre-ordered this CD at Hot Topic in order to get a free T-shirt. In that case the marketing worked.
I definitely have some songs I liked but this is the last cd i go to in the discography.The DU mystery was maketing at its finest!Crash Love was cool with the submitting videos to sing on the album.Burials I didnt know of till after release
the real saving grace was all the bonus tracks
I skimmed the article and it’s pretty interesting to even see articles based on AFI. I feel like one has to truly dig deep to find it. In my opinion, I honestly didn’t think (and honestly don’t ever) that people were aware of AFI existing as a band in general. I’m interested to know, how did yall discover AFI? i was introduced to the band from my father, at the very young age of like 7 or 8. And honestly that’s when my passion for music took off and i was discovering bands left and right. This article points out AFI being on the charts and winning awards but I mention or try to talk about AFI to other people, they’re either an “i dont know what that is” or it’s “oh miss murder right?” I DO remember seeing decemberunderground videos on VH1, fuse and the likes before music videos were replaced with trash tv. And if you’re a fan of the band, i want to say that you follow them and know new albums. When i first heard crash love, i was like whoa this is completely different but i liked it. But i can’t say that it’s an album i consistently listen to. It’s compleeeetly different from anything they’ve done, even decemberunderground. It’s funny though because with every album Davey changes his looks and we can say “oh that’s crash love davey”
I would say you’re right about that. As much as we love them, AFI was never a big or important band in the general scheme of things, nor a household name, not even with DU (at least not nearly as much as many other bands were at that time). Before '03, they were a very underground band, the type of which doesn’t really exist anymore because everyone’s band has a social media account now and anyone can find them, even if they’re playing some obscure or experimental genre. I’ve always believed that AFI was always just way too avant-garde and overall just too different to gather a huge fanbase or be popular outside of the few people who were deeply involved with them and their music (i.e. people like us haha). And honestly, I think they wanted it that way. At least until DU…there was always a recurring theme of “us versus them”, the people who don’t belong anywhere, lonely and neglected people, in AFI’s music really as early as '97 (Keeping Out of Direct Sunlight) and was perpetuated by the band all the way through Sing the Sorrow.
I grew up in a small town in the Midwest US, and in 2003 I knew exactly 2 people who were aware of this band’s existence. One was a girl I had seen at my school wearing one of their shirts, and the other was my friend’s older brother who had gotten me into AFI in the first place a few years prior. Now, maybe it’s because of the area I lived in, but AFI weren’t even all that well-known until Miss Murder, and then they were, at best, a one-hit wonder to the majority of people who may have heard of them. Even with Sing the Sorrow they were still pretty unknown to the general public. I believe there’s an interview online somewhere in which the band actually confirms this. I think it was Davey who said something like even though Sing the Sorrow was their top selling album, it’s not like random people were recognizing them on the street, but that did happen after DU when people recognized him from the Miss Murder video.
Back to the topic of this thread - I was aware when this album came out. I didn’t like it in 2009 and I don’t like it now. It’s just not anywhere near the type of music I would ever listen to by choice, and the only reason I gave it a chance was because of whose name was on the cover. But I really, really don’t like this album. Mainly for the same reason Pablo mentioned in one of his earlier posts about Davey’s lyrics being in a sharp decline since DU. I think I listened to it a total of three times and each time it just annoyed me more and more. Some lyrics are honestly so cliche and/or so over-the-top melodramatic I have a hard time not rolling my eyes at them. The only one good lyric I can think of from that album is “we’re temporary anyway”. Sounds like Davey’s earlier lyrics. And not only are most of the lyrics overly simplistic and objectively just not very good compared to anything he’d written in the past, I really can’t relate to the content in general; seriously, CL is, as far as I can tell, a collection of songs about running around Hollywood with a lover and living a sort of tarnished celebrity lifestyle but being too blinded by fame to realize it.
As for melodies, I can’t even recall like 2/3 of the songs on that album, not even the main hooks. CL’s only saving grace in my eyes (ears?) - if there even is one - is Jade’s guitar work. The first 30 seconds of Torch Song is pretty sick, but then just immediately does a complete nosedive. And that’s how most of the songs on the album sound to me: promising at first, but ending in utter disappointment. I’m glad they put 100 Words on the bonus disc. Beautiful song. Where We Used to Play was interesting and kind of clever, in my opinion, and sort of unexpected.
I believe most people didn’t know about that album largely because the majority of the people who got into them in '06 did so because of DU’s appeal to the “emo” scene, which by '09 had been all but abandoned. That and the band itself was headed in a much more contemporary arena rock type of direction. I sort of lost interest in them for a while in '07 because I hadn’t exactly been a huge fan of DU, and I was in college then and getting into a lot of older European metal I just fell completely in love with. Heard they were putting out CL in '09, listened to it a few times, hated it, then rediscovered their old shit (mainly Black Sails - Sing the Sorrow) in 2012 and realized how much I still adore those albums and still do to this day.
Good Charlotte came to Mexico a couple of weeks ago. My friend traveled to see them and I was about to say how anyone who still care for a band that had like 4 huge songs back in the early 2000s. Then I remembered I liked AFI, and refrained from asking the question 
.
Let’s face it, AFI had 3 huge songs 13 years ago, and they’ve been completely irrelevant in the music scene ever since.
