With a dedicated and ever growing fan base across the world, 8 studio albums and one of the most passionate and energetic live shows you will ever see, AFI have certainly cemented themselves as a mainstay in the music business, not bad for a punk band formed 19 years ago in Ukiah, California.  Their newest album ‘Crash Love’ has not done them any harm with a somewhat rockier sound from that of its predecessors ‘Sing the Sorrow’ and ‘Decemberunderground’ which is testament to a band that continue to do what they do best and evolve yet will always still remain the same band. 

Drummer Adam Carson took the time to talk to us about the making of ‘Crash Love’, their touring plans for Australia and beyond and just how old he feels. 

Just to kick it off with a few questions on the new album, the recording of ‘Crash Love’ completely captures the energy of AFI, how did recording this album differ to previous efforts? 

Well, for the most part I think the process was pretty similar to other records, you know, its just a matter of getting in the studio and trying to decide how the songs need to sound, to how many layers of instrumentation need to be on there and at what sort of garnishing, I sound like I’m making food or something, what sort of layers should be on the top to add spice and colour.   

This album seemed a bit more organic, a little more straight forward and a little more rock so the sound of the four of us playing in a room that we had going in the rehearsal space was sort of just what we wanted to capture when we went in the studio so we made sure that we got really good performances and really good sounds and from there it was just a matter of adding the layers of production that seemed necessary and what we presented was a little more stripped down and a little more direct sounding. 
 

The sound on ‘Crash Love’ is big, full of guitars and a pounding rhythm section, in fact it’s the fullest I’ve ever heard the band sound.  How hard was it to get that vibe across in a recording studio? 

Thank you.  It seems it should be really easy but in fact it is hard and we actually had to start and stop and then start again to achieve that, you know when we originally started we were at a studio in North Hollywood and we were getting everything up and rolling and sounds that we thought sounded good and as we started to track the first couple of songs, something was missing, it was almost intangible we almost couldn’t really describe what was missing but we all felt it and it took another couple of weeks before we really confirmed that it really wasn’t sounding right so we kind of aborted the session and started over, a different  studio, a different environment, a different room and from there we were able to sort of restart and rebuild and get the sounds we liked, the process was no different the second time at that time, it had a little more of a vibe to it. 
 

You changed producers during the making of the album from David Bottrill to Joe McGrath, who has previously produced bands like Greenday and Alkaline Trio as well as Jacknife Lee who has worked with U2 and Snow Patrol which is a totally different vibe, why the change and are you happy with the end result? 

Yeah, I think everything that we recorded with Joe McGrath sounded amazing, the couple of songs we redid with Jacknife Lee was really just sort of an exploratory thing it was really just to see what would come from it.  The versions that we did with Joe sounded amazing and could’ve been on the record, we just wanted to get a different approach and it was an experiment that turned out really great because some of the lightly more ambient numbers on the record were done by Jacknife and I think that his songs, there’s a handful, his songs provide kind of a different sound, a little more of a departure moment on the record and it ended up being a really great experience. 

You’re of course coming back to Australia in February for the Soundwave festival as well as side shows of your own, what we can expect set wise at the shows?  Any surprises? 

Um, well, hopefully ha ha, you know we have another record now and our fans have always identified with one era of the band and there’s other fans that maybe are just familiar with the newer stuff so we try and play a good cross section of all our records, its impossible to play everybody’s favourite songs, but we try and create a set list that wont disappoint anybody and the fun part is there’s a handful of songs that we play that are old or songs that we haven’t been playing too much so people who follow the band and follow the set list sometimes will get excited we’ll dust something off and try to make our way through it.

 

How is the new stuff coming across at the shows? 

Pretty well, these songs are the freshest for us and the most fun to play right now just because we haven’t spent years doing them so fortunately people seem to respond to that, you’d be upset to make a record and have people not care about the songs but so far so good. 

I got to witness the amazing live AFI show when you were last here in Sydney back in 2006 and was blown away, what are some of your memories of Australia from that and previous tours? 

Well, Australia is one of the few places that we had a fan base that was built in before we even showed up, a lot of places in the States and a lot of places to this day in Europe are places that we’ve played over and over and over and we have fans but we still struggle and we’re still trying to build our fan base, playing the same sized venues.  The first time we ever came to Australia the shows were sold out and the people were enthusiastic and excited, you know I don’t know, I imagine that just speaks to the level of Rock music in Australia, its so refreshing to play in front of people that actually want to hear music with guitars and with people playing together in a band and not just pre recorded music.  I can’t say enough of our experiences there. 

Are you excited about meeting / playing with any of the other bands on the Soundwave bill? 

I’m familiar with a handful, I haven’t seen an entire list and I don’t really know who’s on what show, but I’m really excited to play with Jane’s Addiction, if you would have told me in 1998 and 89 that someday 20 years later I’d be supporting them at a festival in Australia I would’ve probably thought you were crazy, people always ask you ‘are there moments that seem surreal?’ that’s definitely going to be one of those moments. 
 

You’ve recently added some more tour dates across the US, how long are you expecting to be on the road for? 

Hard to say, we have plans into the Summer, and I don’t know if that means we’re going to tour through the Summer? I hope so, I’m having a good time and the shows are great and I’d be willing to play as many shows as possible.  At some point down the road we’re going to have to start thinking about the next record, we’d like to get that out in a reasonable amount of time.  There is a point you have to consider packing it in and work on new stuff but we’re still in the process of trying to gauge when that moment will be. 
 

You as a founding member of AFI have been with the band for 19 years this year, what are some of your fondest memories of being with the band? 

Geez, these interviews are making me feel so old ha ha.  You know there’s a million different times in our history that stick out to me, one time that seemed really special, we had just signed with Dreamworks and we were writing the songs that were eventually going to be on ‘Sing the Sorrow’ and there’s a lot of hype and a lot of the labels were interested in us and it was a typical major label feeding frenzy where every labels are trying to sign the band but they don’t really know about the band they’re just responding because other labels are.  So we had just weathered that and gotten through the whole dog and pony show and we had made our decision and we had finally signed and I remember we started working on music, and Dreamworks were still sort of negotiating with Nitro records about them letting us out of the contract and so there was this vacuum that happened, where we went from a year of all these meetings and decisions and deliberating and trying to decide what to do to finally being left alone and I remember being really excited about the music we were writing and really for the first time just focus on that and knowing that the record was going to get made and we’d have the time and the money to make it right and that the songs were sounding really good, that was just a really special 4 or 5 weeks where we just got to be a band, but we knew for the first time we were a band with a little bit of a future at least.  It was really exciting.  I mean that was just off the top of my head, there’s a million moments when it just felt really right. 
 

You would’ve seen a lot of change within the music industry but as a band AFI have adapted to the trends and fads, what do you put that down to?  A fan base? 

That’s really the case, we recognized early on that the bands that really do try to pander to their fan base and bands that do try to follow what happens musically in the world, it always seems transparent and obvious to me, so we decided early on, that good or bad that we were going to make music that we were proud of and I think that’s been a good rule of thumb for us because if the records a success then we can point to having made a record that is really important to us and really organic and if it fails at least we can say we like it and we haven’t done anything wrong.  And I think that more bands should do that. 
 

Can we expect anything special for the 20 year anniversary of AFI in 2011? 

Oh man… I don’t know, that may be a little unfair, I mean Jade and Hunter joined the band in 98, so and to me, I know we made a lot of records before then but that’s what feels like AFI to me and maybe we’ll wait to commemorate it down the road you know.  But knowing Davey and I we’ll probably just try to ignore the fact that its been 20 years and try to hide the fact that we’ve spent more than half of our life doing this.  I don’t know, we’ll have to see.  I’ll let you know… 

Thanks for your time and we’ll see you at Soundwave 

Thanks for caring.  Sounds good.