AFI

The latest release by AFI (A Fire Inside) is a compilation of tracks from the punk rock band’s years with Nitro Records spanning 1996-2000. This collection of songs showcases AFI’s darker, rage-filled and meatier material, with fewer of the pop-infused hooks and melodies of its more recent music. “Fall Children,” a song from the All Hallows EP, showcases vocalist Davey Hovak’s knack for screaming: “From four corners smoke plumes into a reddened sky/ in the face of lantern light/ tonight my destiny lies.” The band’s morbid pace continues with the more popular “The Days of the Phoenix” from 2000’s The Art of Drowning, with Hovak weaving his dark imagery—“I remember when I was told of crushed velvet/ candle wax, and dried up flowers”—with the heavy guitar and drums to create a fantastical sense of place with the song. The band lightens up a little on “I Wanna Get a Mohawk (But Mom Won’t Let Me Get One)” from 1997’s Answer That and Stay Fashionable, a one-minute flurry of moshing and pounding fists to the tune of the story of a 10-year-old boy rebelling against his parents.