Such precious memories from 25 years past. Thank you for sharing more insights from the notorious frat house and the very beginnings of what would become Black Sails. Happy 25 years!
I sang God Called In Sick Today every night for over 2 months at my daughter Crystal's behest to get her and her sister Jade to sleep. I didn't do the screaming. Impromptu revision to not energize the kids while trying to get them to sleep. Black Sails was the first AFI album I ever bought. Malleus Maleficarum was the song title that made me need that record.
I had a cassette for years that had Cereal Wars followed directly by Milk by Anthrax on it. I will never not be amused by those songs back to back.
Blessed Be, Davey, thank you all for Black Sails and everything before, since and coming. Keep evolving. You guys are doing great!
P.S. I sit quietly on the wait list for Ramones X. Congratulations on how quickly that sold out!
YOU on the waiting list for Ramones X! 🖤I’m wondering if the venue will change if there’s a big enough demand. I would really appreciate and be energized from such a show. I am quite attached to DXH’s voice and want to see and hear him in different contexts. I hope they open the list for you Faeye.
It sold out in less than 3 hours, I believe it was. Of course I wish I could attend, but to see the success for all of them makes me happy regardless. More shows later maybe? We can hope! I also rather enjoy his multi genre approach. He once mentioned wanting to return to Broadway and in a separate interview, doing an album of old crooner style music, but his own material. Can you just imagine, something along the lines of Witchcraft by Dean Martin? How truly incredible that would be!
That album changed me forever. For the first time in my life, there were words to describe how I felt. The words being the lyrics on that album. I remember the first time I heard it. I went and sat in my room with my headphones, and listened from beginning to end, while I read the lyrics to each song. I suddenly didn’t feel alone in the world anymore. I felt understood. It will always be my favorite album of all time. It is perfect in every way.
I love how steadfast you remain in the face of those who want you to be what you are not, or no longer wish to be. I see the negative comments and think, “they just don’t understand what he’s been through.” You’ve laid out the story fairly clearly over the last several works. A haunting and heartbreaking lyrical map. Heartbreaking, and infuriating, that someone would hurt you so… I wish for nothing more than your happiness, and whatever small role I might play in it. No matter the look, no matter the sound, I am here for it. I mean it when I say, I would not be who I am today without you. I will always and forever support you in all you do. ❤️🔥
I've heard the story of Malleus Maleficarum's creation recounted before, but it's incredible how that was merely the very first track to come out of the newly-formed iteration of the band; talk about knocking it out of the park on the first try!
I fondly recall when the band played the song in 2017, at Starland Ballroom in NJ. That very morning, while lost in pre-concert daydreaming, I thought to myself, "I would absolutely die if they played Malleus tonight. But there's no way that's happening." It hadn't been played since 2007 after all, and I myself had only started attending AFI shows in 2009. Malleus had been one of those songs that especially resonated with me, to the point that I felt I simply *had* to experience it live at least once in my lifetime. At the show, about 4 or 5 songs into the setlist, one song ended & and as we waited for the next to start, Adam begin to tap the cymbals in that very particular manner...I thought, no way, this isn't real, he's just teasing us while waiting for the actual next song to start. But when Jade played those opening chords and the crowd erupted, I burst into joyous tears, shaking in excited shock. I proceeded to quite literally sing & shout my heart out, more than I ever had in my entire life. Fortunately for me, my prediction was incorrect and I did not perish on the spot, but I do think that moment was so especially magical & I feel so lucky to have been there for it.
Thank you for BSitS & for all that AFI do. I'll never be able to capture in words just how vital this music has been in my life, but I'll continue to sing my praises for as long as I'm able. 🖤
(Please forgive this mess of words. It's 5:30am, and I was properly awoken by a notification from Substack of a new work by your lovely self. I've been blearily trying to fashion a coherent response to it since then.)
Your and Jade's relationship, your artistic output, your dual abilities to bring the best out in each other, is so incredibly important and special. I think it's easy to throw a casual observation that compares the two of you to Lennon/McCartney. While I appreciate the intention of such a comment, at the end of the day, it's inaccurate, at best. A very important, distinct dissimilarity is the endurance of yours and Jade's partnership compared to theirs; theirs broke under intense strain, and yours is still going strong after a quarter of a century. The reality is, there's no one else quite like you-and-Jade at all.
You two are so prolific and so musically dynamic. You still hit so many new high points in songwriting together, with every new album, every side project. (I still dream about what Missing Images would be and sound like.) There's a seamless sense of compromise, a two-moving-as-one blending of sounds, of talent, of finding that other half you didn't know you were missing until it was there. All because you both wanted something more out of music and yourselves than driving hardcore music.
I love every project you and Jade have sans each other, but there's something vital and irreplaceable about the combination of Davey Havok and Jade Puget.
I fiercely love AFI's entire catalog, but it wasn't until Black Sails that my heart really nestles in. (I mean, 3 1/2 is fucking wonderful, I don't care who you are.) The seismic shift of the band can be felt so readily on Black Sails. There's almost a buzz to it, an excitement brimming. It's joyous and triumphant and defiant (I fought for life the whole time you were holding me down / You watched me dying, holding me down / You brought my rebirth, holding me down).
There's also the sudden presence of so much emotion, of vulnerability, of the feeling of a safe space to be exactly who you want to be and who you are, in Black Sails. It's knocked me down every single one of the many, many, many times I have listened to it.
God Called in Sick Today is such an Important Song. It was the start of last-songs on albums that were eviscerating; it prepared us for the heart shred of Moriningstar. It's bare and pained. Woeful.
Malleus is sort of the epicenter of this joyous celebration of a new sound and the final-evolution of the band. Malleus represents so much to me; not just the gripping defiance that is readily evident, even upon first listen. It's the beginning of something profound and good and enduring. Lightning in a bottle.
The reciprocal call-and-response of your voice and Jade's guitar in the final third of Malleus leaves me breathless, still. The tone of both is a natural evolution out of hardcore towards something darker and more complex, but it's also special. It's singular and signature. Incendiary.
It truly pains me to try and make a list of anything involving AFI, when absolutely pressed, I will always put Black Sails up in the top three. Black Sails is a foregone conclusion. It's always up there, just like the band itself, for me. A gimme. (How could either of them NOT be?)
Though I want to give a few words to each song on BSITS, I have written enough here.
That you two continue to create together is a personal and sonic gift. That you can write songs like "Stormbringer" together, now, years and years after the first note sung and lyrics written down (probably and hopefully preserved somewhere on an old, beatup legal pad in a box in Jade's garage?), is staggering to me. It's beautiful that you still feel grateful for and inspired by each other, and it's worth celebrating. That's why this look back at BSITS has been so emotional for me, I think. It's celebrating more than just the album itself. The album was the end product of a convergence that changed everything, and I will forever hold dear your recollection of that time, preserved here.
Wow, your comments were darling! 🖤 This is still my favorite AFI record and Stormbringer, I JUST sang in the car on the way to work, not 10 minutes ago. 2nd Alto, so that song is everything. 😹 I can vocally bottom out like Shirley Bassey and revel in it.
Black Sails was in a stack of other cds I wanted, but I have been a practicing Witch since I was 16, pagan since I was 14, and at the ripe old age of 19, I saw "Malleus Maleficarum" and said to myself, "Oh shit! This has got to be good! I can't wait to hear this!" (Or some such thoughts there abouts...) bought it, went to the car and played that track first. As I recall, I played it thrice... then the rest of the masterpiece that is Black Sails. I was hooked from then on.
Thank you for this album. Thank you for the memories of mine; I will always treasure buying it at Hot Topic (lol) all this years ago, taking it home, putting it in my walkman and heating Strength Through Wounding for the first time, forever changing my life. I finally got to hear you start a show with it a couple of years ago in Orlando and of course I cried but it felt like the closest thing to a religious experience I’ll have at a show. Begged my mom to let me get those words tattooed when I was 17, and she reluctantly agreed, and then on my 18th birthday, I got the ship tattooed. This album changed my life, and I don’t know that you’ll see this but I just want to tell you thank you. And thank you for sharing these memories with us.
I’m in love! Learning about your creative process w/Jade, hatching concepts that became reality is je ne sais quo. 🖤 The first time I heard GCIST my Catholic raised mind was blowing up. I thought, “Who are these people?!? I need to pay more attention.”
The feeling was as intense as watching the scene from John Waters’ “Female Trouble” when Divine didn’t get the cha-cha heels on Christmas morning. Oh, the taboo!
Every time you post anything, my heart screams "OH MY GOD, YES, THIS!!!" You have to be a special kind of evil not to worship at the altar that is Divine. What a Goddess! I loved Davey's John Waters Era, Hot Pink Suit and Art Nouveau Aesthetic. Mon Déesse!!!
Growing up in a tiny ranching town in Northern California I was not privy to a lot of music outside of the country radio station and classic rock albums my parents had. Luckily for me I had a friend with an older brother who was into the Bay Area scene and introduced me to AFI with BSITS and my life was forever changed. Now as I sit here as a 36 year old with my AFI sleeve poking out through normal Dad clothes I still remember my first hearing of that album vividly and it will forever remain my favorite and hopefully my children’s favorite as I engrave it into their brains every day on the way home from school.
Thank you so much for these writings and for giving us AFI. You may not know it but you have affected thousands if not millions of lives with your lyrics and sound.
Your and Jade's writing partnership is like one of those alchemical unions that takes the immense talents of two people and blossoms into something even more than the whole of its parts. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into that first writing session. You paint the mise-en-scene so beautifully that we get to feel like flies on the wall for a second there. And when the subject is the creation of one of the most striking records I know, that is one amazing gift. No offense to Mark, but I am so grateful you and Jade found each other musically.
I was just listening to God Called in Sick Today the other night. It'd been a hard day in the midst of a hard week, and as the music and your vocals built, I felt myself sinkinking into this blissful sense of calm and oblivion. Can't thank you enough for that piece of music.
Your timing with this post could not have been better. A friend of mine and I are on a weekend getaway. One of the last things we discussed before calling it a night was this album and the shift in sound it brought, which led to the conversation about this Stack and how you haven't posted yet this month. We turned off the lights shortly after, and I got the Substack notification within minutes. I'll admit I drifted off to sleep, chuckling over the “OK, Count Chocula” comment.
On another note, I did try Olipop. I was apprehensive since some people with Crohn's report it tearing their stomach up, while others stated all the flavors are unpleasant. I can happily report that it sits fine on me, and I think it might even help. I also have tried all the flavors and personally love the grape, orange, and Barbie peaches and cream.
Lastly I have to tell you a story that happened recently, I hope you’ll indulge me. I do freelance modeling, though that might be changing after an event I did on the 11th. Anyways the photographer that got me into modeling who I work with the most is also freelance. He came to me with a unique opportunity. He no longer owns a studio so we have done mostly outdoors photoshoots, however his neighbors moved out but their rent was payed to the end of the month and they gave him the keys to use the space. I jumped on the. Come the evening of the photoshoot, my photographer had just finished working out the lighting so that my pale ass didn’t become a white blurre and we had just started shooting when my photographer stopped and noted that it was to quite and we needed music. I of course jump to put something on. I was going to put on Dreamcar, since you guys just had the show and Cruel World, but instead decided on my Blaqk Audio playlist. The first song that came on was Cowboy Nights. Towards the end of the song my photographer ask who was singing and noted that you had a very Morrissey/ Violent Femmes sound which I found it interesting that he picked that up. Later in the shoot the music is still going and my photographer is changing out his lens when he stops, looks at me, and states “ This songs about voyorism”. I laughed and informed him of the name of the song, I’m sure you can guess which one. Right after he cracks a horrible joke about voyorism that I will not repeat. In the end there may now be a tasteful picture of me standing topless in a soaker tub laughing at a joke about voyurism. I partially blame you. Lol
I CANNOT stop laughing about Count Chocula 😂 But hey, the Count has always been the best of the Monster Cereal bunch. FrankenBerry ain’t got nothin on him!
I remember the first time ever hearing Black Sails. Strength Through Wounding began, the full body chills set in, and I knew I was in for something special. It has been and remains, a huge staple in my life and will always be one of my favorite albums of all time. Every time I return to it, I’m hit with a plethora of emotions that I can’t quite pinpoint, but feel very deeply. Black Sails brought us all to where we are today, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
The admiration and respect that the four of you have for each other is heartwarming. BSITS is a truly solid album and being able to watch yall progress and evolve over the years has been a joy. Also having my parents share in the experience as they hear echos of the music they cherished in their youth/young adulthood in the 70s/80s
Count Chocula 😂😭…In the end, who’s laughing now? 🖤🖤
Such precious memories from 25 years past. Thank you for sharing more insights from the notorious frat house and the very beginnings of what would become Black Sails. Happy 25 years!
I sang God Called In Sick Today every night for over 2 months at my daughter Crystal's behest to get her and her sister Jade to sleep. I didn't do the screaming. Impromptu revision to not energize the kids while trying to get them to sleep. Black Sails was the first AFI album I ever bought. Malleus Maleficarum was the song title that made me need that record.
I had a cassette for years that had Cereal Wars followed directly by Milk by Anthrax on it. I will never not be amused by those songs back to back.
Blessed Be, Davey, thank you all for Black Sails and everything before, since and coming. Keep evolving. You guys are doing great!
P.S. I sit quietly on the wait list for Ramones X. Congratulations on how quickly that sold out!
YOU on the waiting list for Ramones X! 🖤I’m wondering if the venue will change if there’s a big enough demand. I would really appreciate and be energized from such a show. I am quite attached to DXH’s voice and want to see and hear him in different contexts. I hope they open the list for you Faeye.
It sold out in less than 3 hours, I believe it was. Of course I wish I could attend, but to see the success for all of them makes me happy regardless. More shows later maybe? We can hope! I also rather enjoy his multi genre approach. He once mentioned wanting to return to Broadway and in a separate interview, doing an album of old crooner style music, but his own material. Can you just imagine, something along the lines of Witchcraft by Dean Martin? How truly incredible that would be!
A string of shows in Vegas.
Yes, Please! You and I could go hit the Petrossian Bar at the Bellagio for tea first! Wouldn't that be grand?
That album changed me forever. For the first time in my life, there were words to describe how I felt. The words being the lyrics on that album. I remember the first time I heard it. I went and sat in my room with my headphones, and listened from beginning to end, while I read the lyrics to each song. I suddenly didn’t feel alone in the world anymore. I felt understood. It will always be my favorite album of all time. It is perfect in every way.
I love how steadfast you remain in the face of those who want you to be what you are not, or no longer wish to be. I see the negative comments and think, “they just don’t understand what he’s been through.” You’ve laid out the story fairly clearly over the last several works. A haunting and heartbreaking lyrical map. Heartbreaking, and infuriating, that someone would hurt you so… I wish for nothing more than your happiness, and whatever small role I might play in it. No matter the look, no matter the sound, I am here for it. I mean it when I say, I would not be who I am today without you. I will always and forever support you in all you do. ❤️🔥
I've heard the story of Malleus Maleficarum's creation recounted before, but it's incredible how that was merely the very first track to come out of the newly-formed iteration of the band; talk about knocking it out of the park on the first try!
I fondly recall when the band played the song in 2017, at Starland Ballroom in NJ. That very morning, while lost in pre-concert daydreaming, I thought to myself, "I would absolutely die if they played Malleus tonight. But there's no way that's happening." It hadn't been played since 2007 after all, and I myself had only started attending AFI shows in 2009. Malleus had been one of those songs that especially resonated with me, to the point that I felt I simply *had* to experience it live at least once in my lifetime. At the show, about 4 or 5 songs into the setlist, one song ended & and as we waited for the next to start, Adam begin to tap the cymbals in that very particular manner...I thought, no way, this isn't real, he's just teasing us while waiting for the actual next song to start. But when Jade played those opening chords and the crowd erupted, I burst into joyous tears, shaking in excited shock. I proceeded to quite literally sing & shout my heart out, more than I ever had in my entire life. Fortunately for me, my prediction was incorrect and I did not perish on the spot, but I do think that moment was so especially magical & I feel so lucky to have been there for it.
Thank you for BSitS & for all that AFI do. I'll never be able to capture in words just how vital this music has been in my life, but I'll continue to sing my praises for as long as I'm able. 🖤
(Please forgive this mess of words. It's 5:30am, and I was properly awoken by a notification from Substack of a new work by your lovely self. I've been blearily trying to fashion a coherent response to it since then.)
Your and Jade's relationship, your artistic output, your dual abilities to bring the best out in each other, is so incredibly important and special. I think it's easy to throw a casual observation that compares the two of you to Lennon/McCartney. While I appreciate the intention of such a comment, at the end of the day, it's inaccurate, at best. A very important, distinct dissimilarity is the endurance of yours and Jade's partnership compared to theirs; theirs broke under intense strain, and yours is still going strong after a quarter of a century. The reality is, there's no one else quite like you-and-Jade at all.
You two are so prolific and so musically dynamic. You still hit so many new high points in songwriting together, with every new album, every side project. (I still dream about what Missing Images would be and sound like.) There's a seamless sense of compromise, a two-moving-as-one blending of sounds, of talent, of finding that other half you didn't know you were missing until it was there. All because you both wanted something more out of music and yourselves than driving hardcore music.
I love every project you and Jade have sans each other, but there's something vital and irreplaceable about the combination of Davey Havok and Jade Puget.
I fiercely love AFI's entire catalog, but it wasn't until Black Sails that my heart really nestles in. (I mean, 3 1/2 is fucking wonderful, I don't care who you are.) The seismic shift of the band can be felt so readily on Black Sails. There's almost a buzz to it, an excitement brimming. It's joyous and triumphant and defiant (I fought for life the whole time you were holding me down / You watched me dying, holding me down / You brought my rebirth, holding me down).
There's also the sudden presence of so much emotion, of vulnerability, of the feeling of a safe space to be exactly who you want to be and who you are, in Black Sails. It's knocked me down every single one of the many, many, many times I have listened to it.
God Called in Sick Today is such an Important Song. It was the start of last-songs on albums that were eviscerating; it prepared us for the heart shred of Moriningstar. It's bare and pained. Woeful.
Malleus is sort of the epicenter of this joyous celebration of a new sound and the final-evolution of the band. Malleus represents so much to me; not just the gripping defiance that is readily evident, even upon first listen. It's the beginning of something profound and good and enduring. Lightning in a bottle.
The reciprocal call-and-response of your voice and Jade's guitar in the final third of Malleus leaves me breathless, still. The tone of both is a natural evolution out of hardcore towards something darker and more complex, but it's also special. It's singular and signature. Incendiary.
It truly pains me to try and make a list of anything involving AFI, when absolutely pressed, I will always put Black Sails up in the top three. Black Sails is a foregone conclusion. It's always up there, just like the band itself, for me. A gimme. (How could either of them NOT be?)
Though I want to give a few words to each song on BSITS, I have written enough here.
That you two continue to create together is a personal and sonic gift. That you can write songs like "Stormbringer" together, now, years and years after the first note sung and lyrics written down (probably and hopefully preserved somewhere on an old, beatup legal pad in a box in Jade's garage?), is staggering to me. It's beautiful that you still feel grateful for and inspired by each other, and it's worth celebrating. That's why this look back at BSITS has been so emotional for me, I think. It's celebrating more than just the album itself. The album was the end product of a convergence that changed everything, and I will forever hold dear your recollection of that time, preserved here.
Wow, your comments were darling! 🖤 This is still my favorite AFI record and Stormbringer, I JUST sang in the car on the way to work, not 10 minutes ago. 2nd Alto, so that song is everything. 😹 I can vocally bottom out like Shirley Bassey and revel in it.
Black Sails was in a stack of other cds I wanted, but I have been a practicing Witch since I was 16, pagan since I was 14, and at the ripe old age of 19, I saw "Malleus Maleficarum" and said to myself, "Oh shit! This has got to be good! I can't wait to hear this!" (Or some such thoughts there abouts...) bought it, went to the car and played that track first. As I recall, I played it thrice... then the rest of the masterpiece that is Black Sails. I was hooked from then on.
Thank you for this album. Thank you for the memories of mine; I will always treasure buying it at Hot Topic (lol) all this years ago, taking it home, putting it in my walkman and heating Strength Through Wounding for the first time, forever changing my life. I finally got to hear you start a show with it a couple of years ago in Orlando and of course I cried but it felt like the closest thing to a religious experience I’ll have at a show. Begged my mom to let me get those words tattooed when I was 17, and she reluctantly agreed, and then on my 18th birthday, I got the ship tattooed. This album changed my life, and I don’t know that you’ll see this but I just want to tell you thank you. And thank you for sharing these memories with us.
Beyond and to all time I stand 🖤
I’m in love! Learning about your creative process w/Jade, hatching concepts that became reality is je ne sais quo. 🖤 The first time I heard GCIST my Catholic raised mind was blowing up. I thought, “Who are these people?!? I need to pay more attention.”
The feeling was as intense as watching the scene from John Waters’ “Female Trouble” when Divine didn’t get the cha-cha heels on Christmas morning. Oh, the taboo!
Every time you post anything, my heart screams "OH MY GOD, YES, THIS!!!" You have to be a special kind of evil not to worship at the altar that is Divine. What a Goddess! I loved Davey's John Waters Era, Hot Pink Suit and Art Nouveau Aesthetic. Mon Déesse!!!
You are too kind. 🖤
I’m glad you have felt those same moments. I can’t believe that Black Sails is 25 years old and “Female Trouble” is 50. Soon we’ll be history.
Hang on, I'm going to go get our walkers... we can hook skateboards up to these things... right?
Growing up in a tiny ranching town in Northern California I was not privy to a lot of music outside of the country radio station and classic rock albums my parents had. Luckily for me I had a friend with an older brother who was into the Bay Area scene and introduced me to AFI with BSITS and my life was forever changed. Now as I sit here as a 36 year old with my AFI sleeve poking out through normal Dad clothes I still remember my first hearing of that album vividly and it will forever remain my favorite and hopefully my children’s favorite as I engrave it into their brains every day on the way home from school.
Thank you so much for these writings and for giving us AFI. You may not know it but you have affected thousands if not millions of lives with your lyrics and sound.
Your and Jade's writing partnership is like one of those alchemical unions that takes the immense talents of two people and blossoms into something even more than the whole of its parts. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into that first writing session. You paint the mise-en-scene so beautifully that we get to feel like flies on the wall for a second there. And when the subject is the creation of one of the most striking records I know, that is one amazing gift. No offense to Mark, but I am so grateful you and Jade found each other musically.
Also "Count Chocula" is AH-MAZING. 😂
I was just listening to God Called in Sick Today the other night. It'd been a hard day in the midst of a hard week, and as the music and your vocals built, I felt myself sinkinking into this blissful sense of calm and oblivion. Can't thank you enough for that piece of music.
Your timing with this post could not have been better. A friend of mine and I are on a weekend getaway. One of the last things we discussed before calling it a night was this album and the shift in sound it brought, which led to the conversation about this Stack and how you haven't posted yet this month. We turned off the lights shortly after, and I got the Substack notification within minutes. I'll admit I drifted off to sleep, chuckling over the “OK, Count Chocula” comment.
On another note, I did try Olipop. I was apprehensive since some people with Crohn's report it tearing their stomach up, while others stated all the flavors are unpleasant. I can happily report that it sits fine on me, and I think it might even help. I also have tried all the flavors and personally love the grape, orange, and Barbie peaches and cream.
Lastly I have to tell you a story that happened recently, I hope you’ll indulge me. I do freelance modeling, though that might be changing after an event I did on the 11th. Anyways the photographer that got me into modeling who I work with the most is also freelance. He came to me with a unique opportunity. He no longer owns a studio so we have done mostly outdoors photoshoots, however his neighbors moved out but their rent was payed to the end of the month and they gave him the keys to use the space. I jumped on the. Come the evening of the photoshoot, my photographer had just finished working out the lighting so that my pale ass didn’t become a white blurre and we had just started shooting when my photographer stopped and noted that it was to quite and we needed music. I of course jump to put something on. I was going to put on Dreamcar, since you guys just had the show and Cruel World, but instead decided on my Blaqk Audio playlist. The first song that came on was Cowboy Nights. Towards the end of the song my photographer ask who was singing and noted that you had a very Morrissey/ Violent Femmes sound which I found it interesting that he picked that up. Later in the shoot the music is still going and my photographer is changing out his lens when he stops, looks at me, and states “ This songs about voyorism”. I laughed and informed him of the name of the song, I’m sure you can guess which one. Right after he cracks a horrible joke about voyorism that I will not repeat. In the end there may now be a tasteful picture of me standing topless in a soaker tub laughing at a joke about voyurism. I partially blame you. Lol
Oh, you Scorpios love to be cheeked…😏
I CANNOT stop laughing about Count Chocula 😂 But hey, the Count has always been the best of the Monster Cereal bunch. FrankenBerry ain’t got nothin on him!
I remember the first time ever hearing Black Sails. Strength Through Wounding began, the full body chills set in, and I knew I was in for something special. It has been and remains, a huge staple in my life and will always be one of my favorite albums of all time. Every time I return to it, I’m hit with a plethora of emotions that I can’t quite pinpoint, but feel very deeply. Black Sails brought us all to where we are today, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Through our bleeding 🖤
Black Sails will forever be one of my favorites 🖤
AFI plus Jade is where the magic begins, I couldn’t be more happy that you 4 are still rocking faces off !!!!
The admiration and respect that the four of you have for each other is heartwarming. BSITS is a truly solid album and being able to watch yall progress and evolve over the years has been a joy. Also having my parents share in the experience as they hear echos of the music they cherished in their youth/young adulthood in the 70s/80s