I'm finally getting around to reviewing this album after having bought it the day it came out. AFI up until this point was showing alot of promise as being one of those bands that was going to stick to their guns and actually bring some integrity back to mainstream music. However, they hooked up with Jerry Finn and Butch Vig, 2 producers who have a notorious reputation for ruining bands or just producing outright crap. The result sounds like a band that listened to Linkin Park and decided to drop the rap element and mixed a little Duran Duran in just to make it an even bigger pile of garbage. The majority of this album is commercial junk obviously designed for radio airplay. The lyrics are subpar, which surprises me coming from Davey Havok who delivered such a lyrical tour-de-force on The Art of Drowning. In closing, I would say if you are another Emo Sheep, buy this album.
August 20, 2008 |  | This album is already legendary... |  |
I remember when I first heard this album - it was the first time I'd heard AFI before, but this was the first AFI record I ever owned. What more can one really say about it? It's just an absolute masterpiece. This band became legends when they released this album, and Gods when they released Decemberunderground. Both of them are probably the best rock albums that have come out in many years. "Sing The Sorrow" is flawless. Every song is great. One of the greatest albums ever recordeded.
May 1, 2008The greatest AFI album ever with hit songs like Silver and Cold, The Great Disappointment, and This Time Imperfect.
August 31, 2007 | | "There are no flowers, no not this time." | |
AFI has been around for a while. I haven't heard anything they made before this album, but apparently it was different enough to alienate a lot of fans. In any case, I like it. They make quite capable pop punk with catchy choruses, a high voiced vocalist, and pretty normal guitars. It's not exceptional, but it's solid. Why I really like them is the bombast. Just the tone of the album is a little mightier and significant-seeming than most other stuff in the genre, starting with the opening song's war-cry esque vocals. They do a good combination of the singer's lone voice and several people shouting in unison, and it has the same feel as a general leading his troops into battle.
It could have been front loaded, with all of the singles in the first half, but it maintains quality throughout. The songs do kind of blend together as it goes on, but it's catchy enough that it's hard to care too much. It ends strongly, with the second to last track (which is oddly the first part of the two-part song that ends on the second track), which is a nice softer song, before the epic finale "...But Home Is Nowhere". It has one of the better anthems in it, than after it ends, there's a short silence before a sequence of voices progressing in age tell a creepy story backed up by a minimal piano tune. It then finishes with a stripped-down, well performed capper of a hidden track. Sing the Sorrow is a pretty good punk album helped out by elements that go deeper than the music.
April 19, 2007With their rather bold major label debut AFI surprisingly submerged themselves in oceans of dense production and studio polish; ambitiously expanding their sound into the wierd darkly romantic horizon merely hinted at in their previous outings. Yet with all of the overdubs and electronic effects, the band doesn't get lost in the murk as they perform with the same firey intensity that them such an outstanding punk band. The detailed, well thought out album flirts with both mainstream pop and edgy punk with an adult intelligence and adventerous attitude not regularly found in either genre. Each of the songs are distinctive and unique with the band seemingly introducing a new trick with each track; making for a very exciting, unpredictble listen that never sacrifices the overall mood.
Guitarist Puget often slows the tempo into aggressive but steady marches of what could only be described as anthetmic melancholy, his warm riffs and atmospheric melodies absent of blazing heroics but no less memorable and distinctive. His work more or less providing a dense backdrop for the band's emotional center, vocalist Davey Havok. Evolving into one of the best and most unique song writers around, Davey's poetic lyrics are mysterious, romantic, and heavy on gothic imagery without falling into cheesy cliche. His distinctive vocal melodies are often at the forefront as he plays off backing chants and vocals as well as his own different personas to create memorable sing a longs. Though not blessed with the strongest of voices, his frail nasal wail is convincly vunerable and at times even deeply moving, his emotional belts are full of fire without tough guy posing, and his spaciously used low breathy singing voice is sincere and seductive. Though the subject matter is dark and crypic, the words are sung in such a way that they not only feel deeply important but strangely upfliting.
The gloomy but upbeat anthems "Leaving Song II" and "Silver and Cold" are superb introductions to the band's unique blend of autumn day atmosphere, pop appeal, and rousing punk energy. The big mainstream single "Girls Not Grey" and "Bleed Black" would almost be catchy pop punk if it wasn't for the mature restraint of the performances, smooth dynamics, and the incredibly dense haunting sound. The experimental "Death of Seasons" not only features what may be the band's first venture into hardcore of the metal kind, but dance music and string arrangements. The beautiful lyrics of "This Celluloid Dream" climaxes the album with a triumphant stuttering gallop that isn't easy to get out of one's head. The hidden track that follows "..But Home is Nowhere" is the band at there most experimental and successful. Spoken word poetry/storytelling, light piano and heavy studio effects gradually shimmer away to unveil the band's most naked and revealing ballad. Davey gives the best vocal performance of his career as he quietly croons with convincing regret in his low full voice. The song gradually soars to a powerful climatic high before fading away into a droning sea of what sounds like backwards violin/guitar loops. This is the band at the height of the their huge potential and hopefully not the peak of their powers.
March 27, 2007More reviews at Amazon.com ...
(1090 reviews)