What AFI does very well is to change and yet remain the same. Crash Love, their eighth and newest album, sounds nothing like Decemberunderground, their previous release. That record from 2006 was swimming in keyboards and electronic bits and pieces and had a pretty dark and moody mien to it. And the most recent record has big and slamming guitars, layered choruses with tons of vocals, and driving riffs. And yet there is no mistaking that this is an AFI record full of the harmonic complexities and atmospheric instrumental tracks that have been their stock in trade for nearly two decades now.
On the verge of a Japanese tour, guitarist
Jade Puget and bassist
Hunter Burgan sat down in their management offices on the border of Hollywood to talk about the new record and the things that make them unique.
UG: Your last album, Decemberunderground, was a monster record for the band. It made it to Number One on the Billboard Top 200 chart and brought the band a lot of visibility. That album was produced by Jerry Finn who brought a really unique vision to your music. When he passed away last year, did you think, “Oh, no, who is going to produce our new record?” Or were you even planning to work with Jerry again?
Hunter: Definitely.
Jade: Yeah, you know it’s weird, right before he passed away I had lunch with him and we had kind of made of sort of informal decision to try someone new. Not because of any problem with Jerry but just because you want to explore. We had made two records in a row with him (Decemberunderground and the previous AFI album). But were kind of both talking and we didn’t come out and talk about it specifically but I had the feeling that we were gonna end up working with him again. And I was kind like happy about that and I think we all were happy about the possibility of that.
When Jerry did pass away, where did you start looking for someone to replace him?
Jade: His qualities were, besides being a great producer, especially for me personally, he was a great guitar guy. ‘Cause he loved guitar and he had an amazing guitar collection and an amazing amp and pedal collection. I used all of his equipment because he had the best. And he was like a great friend to us and that’s important, too, that element of being in the studio with someone you actually want to see. And someone you connect with on a personal level. Just his brand of humor was like ours, you know? And like, so, everything about him just meshed with us. So after him it was like, “Where do we go? Where do we start?” I had no idea.
But you did begin the project with David Bottrill.
Jade: When you go into work with someone, you don’t know what you’re gonna get – the personality or the skill level. He is a great producer; we picked him because we’re like, “OK, he made Tool’s Aenima and Lateralus; he worked with Peter Gabriel on all the big Peter Gabriel records; he worked on my favorite Muse record. All of his qualifications and his discography are great and he’s a cool guy and everything, there were no clashes personality-wise. It’s just the sounds we were getting especially with the guitar just weren’t what I envisioned and where I think the record needed to be. So we made a good portion of the record before we’re like, “You know, the sounds aren’t there; we need to do something else.”
And you brought in Joe McGrath.
Jade: Yeah; well, you know, we had known Joe. He engineered our last two records and he’s also a great guitar guy. He’s really got an amazing ear for guitar sounds.
During the hiatus between Decemberunderground and Crash Love, both of you went off to do your side projects. How do Blaqk Audio and Hunter Revenge feed you in a different way than AFI might?
Hunter: I think it’s a couple different things. One is certainly it allows me to play musical styles that are just completely different from AFI. And I guess that sort of helps keep me balanced as a musician having different outlets like that. And then I think also just it’s nice (because) with AFI everything we do is sorta under the microscope of the world. And at times there’s a lot of pressure. And this is sort of like a no-pressure, tech your own gear, and do your own things; it’s just like the opposite. But I think it’s all part of maintaining a balance.
Jade, you went off and did the Blaqk Audio gig with Davey and also worked with bands like Marilyn Manson, the Cure, and Tiger Army. When you go outside of AFI and interact with these other groups, do you bring anything back musically with you?
Jade: Well, with Manson, it was more on the remixing side. I went and did the electronic side project with Davey which obviously was no guitars which is completely 180 degrees away from AFI. And I did a lot of remixing and songwriting. It’s kind of the same thing; different outlets. Obviously doing electronic music is a completely different outlet than playing my guitar. Although AFI does have a considerable amount of electronic elements to it. But doing something that’s completely different and especially touring on it when you’re playing keyboards on stage rather than guitar, is so much different.
"With AFI everything we do is sorta under the microscope of the world."
Jade: You know? Sometimes I’ll write a song on the piano just because it makes you write in such a way by putting together chord sequences and notes you would never think to do on a guitar. To get away from your instrument.
Hunter: Yeah, my songwriting on the piano is like my favorite tool for songwriting.
Composing on bass might be a little limited.
Hunter: I feel like writing on bass you end up with just writing bass lines and that may or may not necessarily work. But piano is like every single note sitting in front of you.
You’ve definitely used every single note on the Crash Love album. There are really complex elements where vocals are bumping up against guitar lines and stuff like that. But the record, on first blush, is a pretty big kind of rock record for AFI. Did the songs that you were writing just lend themselves to bigger rock productions? And more intricate harmonic parts? Were you consciously going for a different sound than you had with Decemberunderground?
Jade: Yeah, umm, I think there was actually sort of an idea before a single note had been written, I was kind of looking at the last record and the way it shaped up with having so many electronic layers and thinking like, “You know why go there again?” Because we don’t want to remake a record. If we were gonna go there again, we have to push it farther which would mean more electronics and I didn’t think that was the right move for us. One thing that we had never done was a rock record. Doing a rock record isn’t the most unique thing in the world of music but for AFI it’s extremely unique! And we had never done it. So we’re like, “Let’s do a rock record.”
The songwriting process was very similar just sort of banging out the songs. Although in records past, a lot of times I sat alone and had written stuff and then sort of brought it in. And this time I wanted to be more spontaneous with it and just be like, “I’m gonna write this thing on the fly.” Or if Dave and I were sitting there just be like, “You know, what if we did a song like this? That was like in this style.” And then just like, “Hmm, nananana” (mimics the sound of a phantom guitar lick). And so it was a little more off the cuff and really it’s sort of like writing on the piano; it’s like you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. You don’t have the time to really sit there and be like, “No, you know, I need to follow these pre-established patterns I’ve done in the past.” Things just come out and you have to go with it.
In that way I think it was different and it wasn’t pre-meditated. Like this group of songs is leading us in this direction.
Can you give us any insights about playing guitar and bass in a trio? The Crash Love record is swimming with little guitar bits and the bass lines on a lot of the songs are really melodic and almost act like another guitar. Does it take a certain instrumental style to make things work in a trio?
Jade: You mean musically? Because we are a four-piece.
Hunter: Well, a singer.
Jade: I don’t want to be taking credit for singing!
A three-piece with a singer. Were you listening to the classic trios like Hendrix and Cream?
Hunter: I loved Hendrix and Noel Redding’s bass parts; they definitely informed several of the songs on this album.
Which songs?
Hunter: There’s like an homage to their version of “Hey Joe.” It just seemed to fit the song we were doing called “It Was Mine.” That ties in with our overall concept of this being a rock record. Certainly a tip of the hat to a classic rock trio like the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I think it’s important especially (because) a lot of younger kids today have no idea.
Jade: It’s funny, I was listening to my iPod yesterday and “Changes” came on and I realized when I first started playing guitar I was like a punk and into punk music. But when it came to guitar, it was all blues. From day one it was B. B. King and Robert Johnson and like Hendrix. And people like Hendrix and Robert Johnson who were able to make their guitar sound like they were playing rhythm and lead. And for me going in as the only guitar player, that had always stuck with me. Like I can’t be out there doing stuff that sounds thin live. So a lot of my early influences were, if I was playing a lead or something, I’m using two strings or three strings rather than one. So the fullness was there. And I was always influenced by the idea of being a single guitar player that could sound like you’re more than one or that you’re playing multiple parts. Obviously Hendrix and Robert Johnson were worlds better than me or anyone else but I took kind of some lessons from that.
That’s exactly what I was talking about. The idea of using two strings for solos so the sound is fuller.
Hunter: And I think that’s always sort of been a part of our sound with Jade having to take on lead and rhythm roles with the guitar. And then I end up taking on not just typical bass roles but putting a lot of melody in there as well.
Jade: I think starting with a couple of records ago, I felt that Hunter’s bass playing had this Motown sort of vibe but what we were playing was a dark, hardcore rock thing. And I think it gave a little uniqueness to our music because it added this kind of bouncy, melodic framework to it. The bands that were doing stuff like us didn’t have that.
That’s a perfect way to describe it. “Beautiful Thieves” is a track from Crash Love with a rocking kind of tone and feel and the guitar also does some pretty panoramic kinds of lines.
Hunter: Jade is doing all these really great like guitar-scapes. What would you call it? Where he’s doing all these broad strokes and I’m doing a lot of different rhythmic variations but they’re like pedal tones almost under that.
You touched on the punk thing earlier and how you broke out of that to embrace the blues and that’s what we hear in a song like “Beautiful Thieves.” Punk music was just a minimal approach to rhythm and melody and everything else.
Hunter: Yeah, I guess that’s what it was. Even though when I first started I wasn’t good yet but I would put on B. B. King records and play to them for hours. But I was like punk; I hung out with punk kids and listened to punk music but it was like I would jam to these blues records.
What about a song like “End Transmission?” That’s another song that is really being pushed by the bass while the guitar falls into the background. Was it orchestrated and arranged that way or did it turn into what is on the album?
Hunter: I think the dynamic of that song, we’re trying to do like a more atmospheric verse and Davey is kind of the focus of that with his vocal and not trying to step on that. And then a really explosive chorus. My guitar stuff is sort of floating and kind of ethereal and kind of picking out notes here and there but when the chorus hits everyone really starts driving.
So there really are a lot of guitars on these songs.
Hunter: Oh, yeah! We had two producers – Joe McGrath and we also worked with Jacknife Lee who has worked with U2 and REM and Bloc Party and a lot of great English stuff – and their approaches widely different. “End Transmission” we recorded with Jacknife Lee and a lot of that it would just tons of old amps with no names on ‘em; these little combos. These dirty little, literally dirty little amps, and like tons of crazy pedals and weird playing techniques. I looked actually and opened up the session the other day and some of the stuff I even forgot I played because so much was just on the fly like making stuff up on the spot. There are tons of guitar tracks and some with just a little trill like a bling or a bell sound (mimics bell sound) and a faraway butterfly guitar. So it really creates this whole tapestry in there.
The dilemma there is always trying to recreate the songs faithfully on stage.
Hunter: Oh, yeah; we’ve been in rehearsals this last week and really trying to figure that out. I want to try and dial in those sounds without having a whole wall of combos and a 1,000 pedals so I’m trying to figure that out still.
What is your guitar of choice?
Hunter: Like I said on the previous records Jerry had all these amazing vintage guitars. Like I use a lot of Les Pauls and Fenders. I’d be like, “I want to do kind of a chimey, clean like a typical Fender with a Twin Reverb.” And Jerry would be like, “Oh, I have this ‘66” and it would be a $20,000 guitar and so I’d be like, “Oh, my God.” Every guitar I was playing was like worth a fortune so I was always paranoid.
But on this record I actually got this Gibson Cloud which is this weird Les Paul that’s chambered and it’s really light. I asked them to send me over a guitar to play and they sent this guitar over and I’d never even played one before. And Joe Barresi who is a producer and an amazing guitar guy and super knowledgeable, he came over and he was playing it and he’s like, “Whoa, this guitar is amazing! I’ve played these Clouds before and this is the best sounding one.” So I ended up playing that a lot.
Hunter: Did you keep it?
Jade: I did keep it; that’s the one I’ve been playing live. It’s just this happenstance and a guitar will come out of the factory and the whole line of the guitars is like so-so and you just get that one that for whatever all the guitar Gods have aligned to make this one guitar. So I’ve probably got the best sounding Cloud on earth. I’m just gonna say that.
Hunter: Let me interject this – as for basses, I had Fender send me just a variety of stuff and I have over 20 basses in my collection. I brought everything to the studio and I would sort of do shootouts between things and it ended up coming down to this brand new stock P bass that Fender sent me that sounded better than everything. Even like these basses from the ‘50s and stuff. So I ended up using that on almost everything.
Jade: It’s kind of funny; you just get the right combination of wood and how its put together and you just get that lucky one in a 1,000.
Even if you think about a classic instrument like a ’58 or ’59 Les Paul, not everyone was amazing.
Jade: Which I used; Jerry did have some amazing ones though for this last record.
"I end up taking on not just typical bass roles but putting a lot of melody in there as well."
Hunter: I don’t think so; Fender is making two new basses for me that hopefully capture some of that same sound. I’m having Alex (Perez, Fender custom shop) take special care of these ones so it’s not just gonna be like off the shelf. It’s gonna be like some actual special ones.
What are you looking for in a bass?
Hunter: With the P bass because I’ve always been like a Jazz bass guy – I only started playing P basses like a couple years ago – certainly there’s a different midrange. I still am looking for a good hefty amount of bottom end on the P that’s not such a narrow thing. I like the heavier ones and the new bridges on the new stock P basses are like a thicker hunk of metal which are great. And also they have the string-through-body which I think really helps the low end resonance. I like thin, fast necks and Alex is actually sanding down the necks on the back. Because normally they have that glossy finish which for some reason makes the neck slower to glide around. Especially when we play festival shows and things where it’s kind of a drier atmosphere, may hands are really slow on the neck. I do a lot of moving around. Other than that, I think just the thin, narrow neck is what I like. And I’m bringing out some Ampeg SVT Classics.
Is that what you used on the album?
Hunter: Yeah; it’s a great sound you can just keep all the knobs straight up the middle, plug your bass in, and it sounds great. I’ll do a little bit of tweaking beyond that but it’s an amazing amp and you can’t do anything wrong with it.
What guitars will you be bringing out?
Jade: I’m bringing out my Cloud which probably isn’t a good idea; I should keep that for studio work.
Hunter: You can get another one.
Jade: Yeah, but I don’t think it’ll sound as good. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t bring it out. It’s light which is the other thing. It’s nice to have a light guitar because we jump around a lot on stage. I used to bring out a Standard and it’s like a tank; jumping around with 50 pounds of guitar around your neck. And my amps I’m like on a constant search. I’m like Diogenes with his amps trying to find the right sound. I went out with a modified Plexi, the Billie Joe mod that Bob Bradshaw does that makes it hotter and more gainy. It was OK and I was trying to blend that with some other stuff and it just wasn’t working right. Now I’ve got these new amps that I’m actually really excited about. They’re Diamond amps, a boutique amp company, and it’s almost like a cross between a Plexi sort of meets a Diesel. It’s heavy but clean with a lot of midrange; it’s just perfect for a live setting.
Hunter: They sound great.
Jade: Thanks, man.
Hunter: Not all the amps that you’ve used have sounded great!
Jade: No, that’s the thing, I’m constantly searching for it. Maybe I found it finally. And for clean I use a Roland Jazz Chorus and that sounds amazing. I really like the way the Jazz Chorus sounds. I got little bit of that ‘80s vibe to me and I can’t get rid of it.
The old standby.
Jade: Yeah, people try to get me to go to this and that. I took AC30s out for a while but they just crapped out on the road; they’re not very roadworthy. I
“Medicate” as the first single is an intriguing choice with that strange little lick and different rhythms and stuff.
Jade: I don’t think we specifically put that one out to make a statement but it is a statement in and of itself. Because it’s so rock, it’s so driving, and it’s got a guitar solo. And then the middle eight section actually almost like harkens back to the traditional AFI meat and potatoes which is a dark breakdown; epic. So it’s really got everything – it’s got this new vibe that we have but it also shows that we still love the epic; we still love the bombastic style that we’ve always done.
The arrangement is pretty adventurous inasmuch as there’s your epic breakdown in cut time and then it reverts back to straight time near the end of the song.
Jade: We’ve always kind of done that. To us a middle eight is not a chance to just go to a different chord progression. It’s a chance to completely do something else for 50 bars and go into this other thing, this other time signature. Which, you know, doesn’t make for the best radio single, but we don’t care, it’s just like what we do, you know?
And the song closes with that intriguing solo.
Jade: I think I played that one on the Cloud. We had this really cool pedal; Jerry had it and it was the first time I’d ever seen it. And Joe had one too; it’s called the Klon (Centaur Overdrive) and it’s like a boutique pedal and it’s made by this dude and it’s like this plain, gain pedal with a picture of a centaur on it. Apparently this guy makes ‘em and he’s really weird and he doesn’t make very many of ‘em and they’re really expensive. And he will like ask you what you’re gonna use it for!
Hunter: Whoa!
Jade: He’ll ask you,“So what you are gonna use this for?” before he’ll make it for you. Anyway, that pedal is the sort of gainy sound of that solo. And it’s such a good pedal; I want to get one. I really need to get one because I’ve used it so extensively …
Hunter: … but he has to do a background check.
Jade: Basically he really wants to know what you’re gonna use this pedal for.
Are you comfortable in the role of solo guitar player and blazing through riffs leads and stuff?
Jade: I’ve always loved shredding but I haven’t tried to bring too much of it to AFI ‘cause it’s not really appropriate. It gets corny if you do it too much. There’s only one other AFI song in the 11 years that I’ve been in this band where I’ve really shredded. And that was a couple of records ago. It was a song called “Dancing Through Sunday” on our Sing the Sorrow album. So I think doing it rarely makes it more impactful. So if all of a sudden you go a few years and all of a sudden you do another solo, it’s a rarity. So it’s not like, “Oh, he’s doing another solo.”
“Sacrilege” is another example of the bass really providing the pulse of the song. Were there moments during the recording of Crash Love when you were working on a rhythm track or the feel for a song and it didn’t work?
Jade: It is pretty easy. I trust Hunter to come up with something that’s going to be tasteful and elevate the song so it’s nice that I don’t think we have to worry about what the other one’s going to do. I think we can both do what we want and it’s gonna mesh and probably that’s a function of working together for so long. Usually things just fall into place rhythmically.
Because a default bass line, for instance, is not just doubling the guitar riff.
Hunter: No; I’ll do that only if I feel like that’s the strongest thing to do. On “Sacrilege” in particular because it’s sort of reminiscent of older songs at least in terms of tempo and rhythms, I tried to something completely different than I’ve ever done before. I’m playing almost an octave above normally what I’d be playing which throws me certainly into a more melodic range. But because Jade in parts of the song is doing things that aren’t totally like just hardcore, it really became important to mesh melodically with what he was doing too. It’s certainly an interesting song because it’s on the one hand very old school but also completely new for us.
“Darling, I Want to Destroy You.”
Jade: I want to point out that that one is the only song we’ve ever created out of an improvisation. Where we’re all there in the room together and just completely came up with something on the spot.
Hunter: Because a lot of bands that’s what they do; that’s how they create all their music. And for us it’s a much more sort of cerebral approach to it. But that was the only one where we were just sitting there at rehearsal and jammed out a song. It doesn’t sound very jammy but that’s how it was created.
Jade: We refined it and worked on it but that’s where the kernel of that came from.
“Too Shy to Scream” has a weird kind of shuffle bounce to it.
Jade: That song is actually interesting; the rhythm of that came from Davey and I sitting there and talking about different stuff we hadn’t done. There was an OMD song and we were listening to it and it had a kind of feel to that even though OMD is sort of like an ‘80s melodic, electronic-leaning pop band. It kind of put us in the mindset of doing a shuffle and so that was kind of the genesis of that song. It came together really quickly. But it’s a fun rhythm; it’s so energetic. And it’s got a swing to it and Davey and I always want to push the tempo and then the rhythm section of Hunter and Adam (Carson, drums) want to keep that swing (mimics a shuffle rhythm).
Hunter: That pocket is really important.
Jade: Yeah, and so we’re always pushing the pocket and it’s walkin’ a fine line between just playing like a punk beat and putting a swing to it.
"I think we could have gone too far in effect of not going far enough and really made a dumbed down rock record."
Jade: I think that’s the most challenging one for Adam; he really has to keep it altogether for the band and keep that pocket and keep that swing to it. Any band to be successful, if the rhythm section is not there everything fails. I can do whatever I want really.
Another important aspect of AFI and the new album are the gang vocals on a lot of these choruses. Everybody in the band sings which is pretty rare for a group.
Hunter: It’s taken a little while to sort of figure out all the stuff that’s on the record. On some of the songs, I did multiple harmonies on and obviously that’s impossible to do and then some of it rhythmically is so difficult. Because the harmonies were written in the studio and never actually performed at the same time as we were playing.
Jade: It was nice (but) I hate singing in the studio. I have to sing a lot on stage because a lot of our songs, so many of the choruses have these big epic things where all four of us are singing. So, Hunter did a lot of the harmony (on the album) and I was really stoked because I didn’t have to do ‘em. I just do not enjoy it.
Does everybody in the band actually write?
Jade: Umm, yeah, it starts out with Davey and I writing together but as a band obviously what you’re hearing on the record is a product of everyone bringing their talent and their creation to what they’re doing. And the song is a sum part of everyone’s playing.
Which makes sense because there really are a lot of diverse sounds that AFI creates and yet they all work together.
Jade: It’s weird and it’s become more prevalent as the years go by that we’re all so influenced by such completely different things. Like you take our musical tastes and we could be in four completely different bands. But when we come together and bring all those influences, I think that’s why it makes this sort of strange thing that is us. I mean it’s not like we’re out there sounding like Robert Fripp or Brian Eno or something, but what we do has its own sort of uniqueness to it, I think.
When you reflect back on Crash Love, do you think you made the rock record you set out to make? Could you have gone too far in a rock direction where an AFI fan may have been alienated by the sound?
Jade: I think we could have gone too far in effect of not going far enough and really made a dumbed down rock record. In which case I think we would have disappointed ourselves and our fans. We could have made something that sounded like AC/DC which is great for AC/DC but for us it would have been like, “You guys just came off making this really complex record with all these electronic layers and now you’re doing like these three-chord songs!” We wanted to do rock but keep it interesting and push the genre at least a little bit and push our boundaries a lot.
Has the musical landscape changed a lot since Decemberunderground?
Jade: Enormously. Now just with technology things are accelerating insanely. When you take three years off to make a record, that is a whole completely different ballgame. When you come back the fans are different; what is cool and what isn’t is different; what people like and what is popular, everything is different. I think part of what we’re good at or what is kind of fundamentally important about us to our fans is that we drop records that have nothing to do with what’s going on in the larger world of music. Just because we’re away from it. If emo is big, we don’t come in and drop an emo record; we come in and drop this record that just sounds like AFI and nothing else. I think that helps. Even though it might alienate people who are like, “I like emo right now; I don’t like what you guys are doing.” I think it helps us because it sets us apart from what other people are doing.
And now it’s down to learning the songs and translating Crash Love live? Trying to sing and play at the same time!
Jade: It’s wild – new equipment, we got a new guitar tech, so that’s always a big thing. We’re running tracks on some stuff ‘cause there are still some electronic elements here. Strings and a couple pads here and there and we always like to recreate a little bit of that studio magic.
Interview by Steven Rosen
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