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After 10 years of winning fans the old-fashioned way, Bay Area hardcore
crew AFI is pulling the kind of album sales rarely achieved without major label
muscle. Here's their success story in the making.
"I think everybody wants to hear emotional, heartfelt music," says AFI
drummer Adam Carson about the band's appeal. "They don't want to be fooled.
It just wouldn't mean the same if we were singing and playing music about a
lighthearted subject. The amount of energy we put into this band deserves to
focus on something that is a little more real and a little more honest."
His comments come as AFI's fifth album, The Art Of Drowning (on Offspring
vocalist Dexter Holland's Nitro Records), and its leadoff single, "The Days
Of The Phoenix," approach the border of Hitsville. The chilling anthem - a
kind of horror-noir look at the good ol' days - has muscled up to 6,000 spins at
Modern Rock radio since its birth. Sales of the record have reached into six
figures - outstanding for an indie label release - and it appears that after 10
years of hard work, payday is on the horizon.
AFI (short for A Fire Inside) began in 1991 in Berkeley, California as an
after-school diversion for founding members Havok and Carson, along with
now-departed bassist Geoff Kresge and guitarist Markus Stopholese (replaced in
late 1997 by bassist Hunter and guitarist Jade Puget, respectively). The band
signed to Nitro in 1995, issuing Answer That And Stay Fashionable that same year.
At the time, the band hadn't yet established its enigmatic image, although it
flickered in the background and would emerge gradually. Havok adopted a pasty
gothic look, dressing in black and wearing make-up, and his lyrics soon became
cloaked in supernatural metaphor as the band's brand of Bay Area punk rock was
honed to an eerie edge
The Art Of Drowning finds the band tight, confident and ready for the level of
success that would ensue, as evidenced by the steady 1,000-plus SoundScans per
week it still garners. On tour, the band plays to sellout crowds of 800 to
1,700; they also enjoyed headline status on the main stage at the 2001 Warped
Tour, exposing over 400,000 people to the AFI live spectacle (imagine a tortured
tent revivalist fronting a trio of punk rock big-block Chevys). "We even
sold out a show in Boston," says Carson. "What's weird about that is
that we were begging to never go there again. It's a tough city, but we went
back and played to 800 kids and it was one of the best shows on the tour. It was
pretty exciting."
The cathartic, communal atmosphere of the shows is key to the band's appeal. The
AFI faithful, many tattooed with the band's cartoon/horror iconography, chant
"Through our bleeding, we are one!" as the veteran group takes the
stage. Several return home afterward to engage in ardent online discussions of
the performance and the significance of Havok's lyrics. It's something the
singer enjoys so much that
he balks
at expounding on them, stating, "I hope the fans find something personal in
their own interpretations."
The congregation continues to expand at a startling rate, as evidenced by
attendance, airplay and sales. AFI back catalog sales figures have increased
dramatically in the past year and total sales for Drowning - including
non-SoundScan outlets - are approaching 150,000. That's a staggering amount for
an independent label, and almost eight times the 20,000 that got Train signed to
Columbia. The band prefers not to comment as to whether there have been talks
with major labels, but Carson says, "I think we have lots of interest right
now, [but] the thing about major labels is they have no idea how to sell from
zero to 100,000 records, and that's where a band figures out who they are and
what they sound like. From 100,000 to however many million, that's the easy part,
because it just takes a lot of money and a little strategy. We've been able to
sell that many records by being a band for 10 years."
He continues, praising Nitro for a fantastic job nurturing and supporting AFI
and noting that there's no reason to consider a move presently. "We owe
Nitro another record. How we're gonna deal with that I can't say, but I will say
they've been super-supportive of us in every aspect and I think they'll continue
to [be]."
Nitro general manager Brad Pollak says the label is just as proud of the band,
stating they knew it would be a slow build and were happy to treat the promotion
of Drowning as business per usual - despite the fact that both the band and the
label knew there would be radio opportunities, particularly with "The Days
Of The Phoenix."
"The game plan was always to keep following AFI the way that we've been
doing from the beginning," Pollak says. "We didn't want to have an
out-of-the-box, go-for-a-hundred-adds the first week type of thing. [We decided
to] gradually work it at Modern Rock specialty shows and see if that would work."
Obviously, it did. Specialty show support turned into early add-takers in the
first few months of release, prompting other stations such as KWOD in
Sacramento, KXRK in Salt Lake City and 91X in San Diego to follow suit. Six
months later, with programmers' ears primed, Nitro expanded the campaign by
issuing a second single, "Wester," a performance video for
"Phoenix" (which received airplay on MTV2), running spots on MTV and
ESPN, and continuing to court press and radio. Among the fruits of Nitro's labor
were a seven-page feature in Alternative Press and a new add at KROQ after
Nitro's Sean Ziebarth lured the station's MD and APD, Lisa Worden and Gene
Sandbloom, to one of AFI's sold-out Los Angeles performances. Nationwide re-adds
and new adds followed, and going into the fourth quarter - the biggest
record-buying time of the year - Nitro is cautiously optimistic.
"Whether 'The Days Of The Phoenix' is going to be a huge hit or not... it's
far too early to tell," says Pollak. "But they've already done really
brilliantly with this record and we're really proud of them. The rest is up to
the gods." AFI, for its part, will continue doing what they do best: taking
it to the people. "Touring has been probably 95 percent of our success,"
says Carson. "And it's absolutely the most important thing and the most
instantly rewarding part of the band. Albums are hard projects that take a long
time to come to fruition. The energy we get from, and give to, our fans is a
real powerful thing."