AFI is a band that has changed sig­ni­fic­antly over the last few years. Going from a col­lec­tion of angry teen­agers with heavy punk influ­ences in the early 90s, theyve moved through stages of their life, their sound grow­ing up from a noise to some­thing more com­plex and clever, cul­min­at­ing in Sing the Sor­row, their 2003 con­tri­bu­tion. For me, and many oth­ers, this album was their mag­num opus it was well put together, and showed a band at the top of their game. And after their last album — I have to say — Decem­ber­und­er­ground, for all its hype, was a big downer. AFI have changed their sound yet again, but this time for the worse. I cant quite put a fin­ger on why, but the band seems uncom­fort­able with this new found res­on­ance. Theyve moved too far from their ori­ginal roots, and it shows. To me, the entire album is clum­sily cobbled together. While they do show signs of their pre­vi­ous genius, they have intro­duced a num­ber of ele­ments that simply do not fit. For instance, in a num­ber of their songs, theyve included elec­tronic sounds like wouldnt have looked out of fash­ion in the 1980s, or early 1990s pop. The songs on the album vary too much for them to keep any sort of reg­u­lar­ity. Their open­ing track, Pre­lude 12/21, lacks their usual get-up-and-go. Instantly, they move onto Kill Caustic, with Davey Havoc scream­ing like the lead singer for Cradle of Filth. The chorus is the only good part of the song, and for this they can at least be praised. The whole album is too incon­sist­ent. The only things that redeem the album are chor­uses to Kill Caustic and Kiss and Con­trol, slip­ping into their afore­men­tioned Sing the Sor­row roles with rel­at­ive ease. A Fire Inside now looks more like faintly glow­ing embers its all very well to try some­thing new, but theyve been doing that for years. Decem­ber­und­er­ground is simply too far from their ori­ginal punk-rock roots and the band sound ill at ease and lack con­sist­ency through­out the entire album.