Sing The Sorrow

Following the 2001 release of Son Of Sam’s Songs From The Earth, a one-off album recorded with members of Samhain, AFI singer Davey Havok was offered the chance of a lifetime: to front the reformed Misfits. He said no. As it turns out, he made the right move: AFI's subsequent full-length, Sing The Sorrow, is not only the group's major-label debut, it's the breakthrough Havok & Co. were struggling toward for years. Produced with stadium-filling hugeness by Butch Vig and Jerry Finn, the band's trademark goth-core sound has been sliced open, stuffed with bleak guitar hooks, rewired with synthesizers and digital beats, and sewn back up seamlessly. It's a slick album, and yet it's the band's most emotionally bare; on "Girl's Not Grey," Havok has never sounded more vulnerable, even as the massive production places him on a larger stage than he's ever stalked. The Misfits may have inspired AFI, but Sing The Sorrow consummates an evolution that's all about the future of hardcore, not its past.

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