I had a bad feeling about this record, coming as it did after the so-so Decemberunderground. It didn't make much of an impression at first, but after listening to it more closely, Crash Love turned out to be a big step up from the last record. 'Beautiful Thieves' may wind up being one of my favourite AFI songs to date.
From my review:
To call Decemberunderground an existential crisis might be a bit of an over-statement, but its effects were not lost on the band. Despite broadening their appeal substantially, Decemberunderground divided fiercely both the band’s casual and hardcore fan base. The Despair Faction will always keep the faith, but, even so, many were disillusioned by the changes. Though they’ve never explicitly admitted it, Jade and singer Davey Havok created the side-project Blaqk Audio as a vent for their electronic work in order to preserve AFI as a pop-punk project. As a result, Crash Love does sometimes feel like a step backwards, with loud echoes of 2003’s Sing The Sorrow and 2000’s Art Of Drowning, but they’ve also managed to incorporate enough new influences to keep things fresh, and the result is a far more subtle and accomplished record.
Read on...
The album was streaming in full on MySpace, but seems to have been downgraded to 30-second samples, but pick up a rather excellent unused track from Decemberunderground, 'Fainting Spells,' here.
