A.F.I. - The Art of Drowning

This is the album that happened right before Sing the Sorrow, and while it foreshadows how A.F.I. would fall out of my good graces (and into the good graces of everyone else on the planet. It's more about me being weird than the rest of the planet being wrong) it's still pretty much the same old A.F.I. punk. This album's release was preceded by three EP's which were increasingly obsessed with the macabre. While A.F.I. has always had at least a passing interest in death and goth iconography, they really started to turn a corner on this album in terms of lyrical content. The construction of the songs is still more punk than goth, something that would change on Sing the Sorrow. So yeah, this is pretty much the last hurrah for the A.F.I. I knew and loved.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best thing A.F.I. has ever done. The songs on this album are not all superfast no-holds-barred punk, as it was with previous A.F.I. albums. They mix things up a bit, but don't really stray too far outside the confines of whatever it is that makes punk punk. A song like "The Despair Factor" is a far cry from "Yurf Rendenmein," but it still seems like oldschool A.F.I. Anyway, this is the best A.F.I. album in the world, at least according to the guy who prefers what they were to what they are.