Why AFI Will Never Do An Anniversary Tour

"I am in Hollywood, California and I am in the shower."

This is our first clue that Davey Havok, born David Paden Marchand, will be an upfront and to-the-point interviewee, wasting no time in conveying his opinion about something. His words are so fluid it's almost like he's rehearsed them, but later we realise it's because AFI's long-time lead singer just knows his shit back to front.

The Californian alt rockers — once called an emo band back when Havok rocked a huge angular side-fringe, lip piercing and eyeshadow — are gearing up to launch their tenth record, self-titled but referred to as The Blood Album.

"Somewhere in the middle of [writing] it, I started to recognise that lyrically blood was reoccurring and it wasn't something I was consciously doing. When I noticed it, I brought it up to Jade [Puget] and I suggested it might be an aesthetic that could carry the record through to the end," Havok relays.

So they did, announcing four vinyl colour variants to coincide with the four blood types. The macabre theme suits the music well, bolstered by Havok's trademark theatrical, goth-rock pipes and oft-brooding musicality. Havok cites post-punk as an influence for The Blood Album, but says it wasn't a deliberate direction for the quartet.

"We don't talk about going in one direction or another, we just write. Whichever way it moves us, we follow. That was the case for the Blood record; we wrote over 60 songs for it and we had the difficult process of culling them down to a batch, and then further distilling that into what we think the record should be," Havok explains.

"We don't talk about going in one direction or another, we just write. Whichever way it moves us, we follow."

"I'm very happy that a lot of more prominent post-punk moments made the record because there were a few that didn't."

Havok strikes us as a very organised, systematic person, as he espouses without a hint of resentment that he's so busy writing and touring with AFI, Blaqk Audio and XTRMST (both side projects with AFI guitarist, Jade Puget) and new supergroup Dreamcar (with members of No Doubt), that he has to plan his life to the minute.

"It's exhausting, I barely do [have time for myself]. It's a lot of calendaring and a lot of scheduling. I'll finish this interview and I'll go shoot a video," Havok recites. "I had a new Blaqk Audio song sent to me today — Jade and I have written over 50 songs for the Blaqk Audio record — so it's a matter of planning when I'll write the songs, when I'll go in to record those songs... it's a lot of scheduling."

Puget comes up often in our chat, having taken on production duties officially for The Blood Album on top of his role as the band's guitarist. The duo have played in a plethora of bands together for over 20 years, and it seems the pair never run out of inspiration. Havok describes having Puget as the album's producer as "seamless".

"For Jade, it was much different, as he had such a greater workload and pressure, I'm sure, that he put on himself internally ... he had so much more to work on that he had never signed up for in the past. At the same time though, he'd never taken the title of that position — historically, Jade has always had such a heavy hand in producing, so for him to take that step was a very natural one and something that resulted in such a fantastic sounding record," Havok enthuses.

"Everyone who has heard this record so far has actually commented on the sonic quality of it and the identity of it and that's testament to Jade's producing — who better than Jade to know what AFI should sound like?"

We joke about whether Puget has earned himself double the AFI dollar by taking on the big responsibility. Havok laughs for the first time. "I don't know! I don't think it's double... I mean, producers do get paid for their job and they do get points [the percentage of a band's royalties that a producer earns] and I'm sure Jade will. To be honest, that stuff doesn't really concern me that much so I don't know the details," he finishes.

For many in this scribe's generation, the band's Sing The Sorrow (2003) and Decemberunderground (2006) were hugely influential records and earmarked the start of the emo subculture. We ask Havok whether AFI have ever entertained the idea of an anniversary tour, and he answers in a decidedly sage way.

"It never appealed to me because each record represents a time and a place," Havok says. "And they were great times and places for each of those records but I don't feel it necessary or inspiring to go back and focus on one of those times and places... because we're here now."