Merch Store Having Super Sale on Hoodies

AFI's online BandMerch store is having a "super sale" on hoodies through June 28. You can buy the Tentacle Hoodie and the Decemberunderground Hoodie for $19.95 each. Both hoodies are down from an original price of $39.95.

New Affiliate (Discount Code!)

We were recently contacted by Band-Tees.com, they are now an affiliate of AFI News HQ! They have generously agreed to give all of our readers a 10% discount! To use the discount, use the coupon code "AFINEWSHQ". This code is valid once per customer. Enjoy!

New AFI Shirt "Film Noir"

A new AFI shirt titled Film Noir has been posted for sale on Hot Topic and ShockHound! The shirt is $20 on both sites and available in sizes ranging from XS-XL.

Ding Adds Blaqk Audio Skin

Ding, a company that sells music and art-related skins for electronic devices, has just released a new skin for Blaqk Audio. The design is called Night Light, and will fit on your cell phone, laptop, mp3 player, or gaming device. The skin costs $15.99.

Ding also sells an AFI skin called "Bunny" here for the same price. It features the Decemberunderground trees and a bunny.

Summer Sale On AFI's Online Store

AFI's online store is having a sale! If you spend $25, you'll get 25% off all merchandise. This doesn't include tax or shipping. Happy shopping!

'Answer That' CD Up For Charity Auction

For those of you who don't have the Answer That and Stay Fashionable CD, there is currently an eBay auction for one. 100% of the proceeds from the sale go to the Goodwill Industries of San Fransisco, so start bidding!

AFI News HQ Article in School Paper

Hey Guys,

I was interviewed back in March about AFI News HQ for a feature in my school paper. Today, it was put up online. If you are interested in reading it, feel free to click on the picture below.

Trivia Tuesday: Miss Murder Music Video

Here is another installment of Trivia Tuesday!


1. Mark Webb directed the video
2. The video was shot at City Hall in Los Angeles
3. The video was shot in 2, 14 hour days
4. In the directors cut of the video, Prelude 12/21 begins the video
5. MTV shot "Making the Video" for the song as well as "Love Like Winter"
6. The centerpiece on the floor in city hall was covered with a plastic mat showing the Decemberunderground trees.
7. Multiple takes had to occur for the bunnies to stay in Davey's hands rather than scurrying away

Hot Topic Online Clearance Features AFI Shirts

Under the clearance section on Hot Topic's website, 2 t-shirts are for sale. Both originally cost $20 or more, and are now on sale for just $4.99. These shirts are:

Spray Stencil Shirt
Crash Love Tee

A Message From Jason Regarding Yesterday's Hack

AFI News HQ was hacked within the last couple of days. Unfortunately, this occurred while I was on vacation, and I will still be on vacation for the next 2 weeks. I found out about it yesterday afternoon and I have been in constant contact with the other writers and admins. We do not know who the hacker was, but here is the bottom line.

• Mary's administrator account was hacked; all posts were deleted
• We have taken back control and all passwords have been changed
• I have kept backups of the blog on other blogging sites, which we will use to restore as many posts as possible, although it will be a long process. We literally have to repost over 1,000 posts. The blog may be very chaotic for a few days with all of the ancient news, but it will all be sorted out eventually and everything will be back to normal
• Pablo's status is undetermined at the moment, so please do not ask about that
• We will continue to post new news as we rebuild the old posts. We actually just made some breaking news about Blaqk Audio song titles!
• AFI News HQ will recover from this attack and continue to serve the AFI fan community

Key Lime Pie Radio giveaways

The nation's sole AFI-only radio show, Key Lime Pie Radio, will be giving away a bunch of AFI goodies this Monday. Listen to KLP Radio on WGDR.org from 3 to 4EDT for your chance to win a Crash Love LP, Deluxe CD, and a few regular CDs.

Many thanks to Interscope for sending the CDs and records, they were meant as thank you gifts for the WGDR fund drive but that ended last week, so these are now giveaways! If you can support WGDR with a donation that would be great, it helps keep Key Lime Pie on the air!

Beautiful Thieves 7'' Order Messups, Damaged Vinyl Will Make Record Even Rarer Than 500 Copies

If you ordered your Beautiful Thieves 7'' from Better Leisure, we have some bad news. According to many people who bought the 7'' from them, the site only got 50 copies for preorder rather than the 200 they were supposed to receive. This hasn't been confirmed yet, however.

Other sellers, such as recordstore.co.uk, have sent e-mails to several customers saying that a certain quantity of the records they received were damaged and cannot be shipped. This means that the vinyl is limited to even less than the original 500 copies.

Update 4/16: We're getting numerous comments from readers who have had their orders cancelled from stores such as HMV and Action Records. One reports than a record he received from Better Leisure was very dusty. If you're having problems like these, send us an e-mail so we can put it here.

Once we get more information regarding this issue, we will let you know.

New Merch Item: Free Transfer Tattoo

A new merch item has popped up at the United Kingdom shows: free Crash Love transfer tattoos. The tattoo is of the Crash Love logo with the lyrics “no one suspects at all” on it. The logo is the same as the etching on the Beautiful Thieves 7”. Here is a picture of the tattoo, provided by Katie:

Interview Series: Jason Interviews Adam, Pt. 1

We’re very proud to finally present to you the first episode of many in our series of exclusive video interviews with AFI. In part 1 of Jason’s 3-part interview with Adam, he discusses AFI’s early days, drumming technique, and songs played on the current tour.

Universal To Cut CD Prices To $10 or Lower

Billboard is reporting on a new initiative by Universal Music Group to cut CD prices across their entire lineup. Starting in the next quarter and for the rest of 2010, the company will test lower CD prices. Single CDs will have the suggested list prices of $10, $9, $8, $7 and $6. The label plans to release deluxe editions at a higher price point. With Universal the largest music company right now, the move is likely to push prices downwards at the other majors as well. This in turn, if it actually happens, will affect AFI as well as many other artists.

AFI is under contract with a subsidiary of UMG, Interscope Records. You can read the entire article here.

Shirt from March 25 Slim’s DF Show

Thanks to Horror_Kid we’ve found a picture of a shirt printed specially for the Despair Faction show at Slim’s in San Francisco last Thursday, March 25. You can see the picture here.

AFI News HQ interviews Geoff Kresge: Part 3

Here’s the final part of our interview Geoff Kresge. First of all, all my appreciation and gratitude to Geoff for taking the time to fill out these amazing questions. It’s so nice to amazing that although he left AFI 13 years ago, one can really tell it’s still a big part of his life. Thanks, Geoff.

We really hope you enjoyed this interview!

P: Do you find yourself playing AFI songs when you’re home alone?

GK: No. I haven’t played any of those songs since my last performance with the band, which is coming up on being 13 years ago. I have listened through some of the session tapes in the recent past, but typically once I finish a record, I only listen to it occasionally. I’ve probably heard ATASF ten times or less since it was recorded. Even fewer for VPOY. I still feel attached to the songs, I just don’t generally listen to my own albums. I mean, while you’re making a record you hear those songs so many times during the recording and mixing and mastering stages that it’s enough to last a long time. Haha!

P: If I’m not wrong, you were on stage with AFI for the first time in 12 years now singing Nyquil at the record release show for Crash Love. How was it? How did the band approach to you about this?

GK: That’s right! It was completely unplanned though. I didn’t have any idea which song they were going to play until I got onstage and asked Hunter what was going on. He started to hand me his bass, but as I mentioned, I haven’t played those songs for so long that I couldn’t have played the bass parts if my life depended on it! I was quite surprised that I could remember the lyrics. It really was a blast singing that song with them though.

P: Pablo’s personal favorite oldskool AFI song is one that you wrote both lyrics and music for: Love is a Many Splendored Thing, which is now a new-fans favorite “old song” due to it being revived for live shows. Can you tell us more about this song? What’s the story behind it? How did you come up with the lyrics?

GK: Ah, that’s kind of a silly lyric. It’s not my best work by any means, but it was inspired by someone I knew at the time and how I felt about them and their attitude towards me. It was just a way of blowing off some steam. If I had known that they would still be playing that song more than fifteen years later, I probably would’ve put a little more effort into the lyrics. Hahaha!

P: What’s the thing you’re the most proud, and the thing you regret of doing with AFI?

GK: The thing I’m most proud of? Being a part of getting ourselves out of the garage, into the studio, onto a vinyl record, touring, building the band up to what it was at the point that I decided to leave in 1997.

The thing I regret? I’d love to be one of those people that says, “I have no regrets,” but that old line is a bunch of crap. Anyone that would actually say that is full of it. Haha! Of course there are things that I regret from my time in the band, but nothing can change those things. Even if those things could be taken back or reversed, would the end results be favorable? There are mistakes that all four of us made, individually and collectively, but those mistakes paved the way for other things – other successes, other mistakes, and so on. I don’t think the band would be the same now if any one or two of the things that happened in the past were to be altered or erased, as much as I or anyone else may wish that certain things had happened differently.

P: AFI has around 10 songs in video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Have you had the chance to play them yet? What songs from your era do you think would be fun to play in such games?

GK: I don’t really play video games, so I’m not really sure how to answer this one. I have played Guitar Hero a few times, but I don’t know which of those songs, if any, would be fun to play in that format. Maybe “Advances in Modern Technology”?

P: Geoff, you most likely are the most tattooed AFI (former) member. What are your tattoos of? What was your first tattoo?

GK: Well, I think Davey and I probably have a similar number of tattoos, to be honest. My tattoos are done in the “traditional” style of tattooing, even if the themes of my tattoos are not exactly of a traditional nature. I have too many to list what they all are, but I have always tried to chose my tattoo artists based on their own particular style of tattoo art. My first tattoo was Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Rat Fink, which is a character I have loved since I was very young. It’s not very well done, technically, but it’s there. Hahaha!

P: Do you follow the sXe philosophy?

GK: At one time, I would have said “yes”. Of course there’s the old slogan, “If you’re not now, you never were,” but from my point of view, the straightedge lifestyle has, over time, grown to include too many political aspects and far too many rules for my liking. I know that the scene is not as intense as it was during the 90s, but there are still parts of it that I do live by and parts that don’t apply to me. Personal morals and personal choice are more important to me than putting a label on my lifestyle.

P: What made you change from electric bass to stand-up bass? How was the change like? Was it hard, or it was just natural?

GK: I actually started to take an interest in playing the upright bass some time in 1990-1991, before I joined AFI, but I wasn’t able to afford one at the time. I actually bought my first upright bass after the recording of VPOY, but at that point I didn’t really have much free time to dedicate to learning it, figuring I would learn how to play it when we took our next break from touring. I didn’t realize that the next break in touring would be because I had decided to leave the band, but that’s how it turned out.

Making the transition from electric bass to the upright bass was very challenging. I thought that I would be able to translate my skill level from one to the other, but I found out quickly that it just wasn’t possible to do so. I became very discouraged with the learning process and I didn’t even begin to feel confident as an upright player until several years later, after I had played a lot of shows and had done a lot of touring, where I was playing night after night. It was basically like learning to play an entirely new instrument, at least in my case.

P: Anything else you want to add?

GK: Just that people should visit the Official Key Lime Pie Records page at: myspace.com/keylimepierecords so they can check out the “official” discography that has the correct information for all of the early releases. There have been a lot of mistakes in older discographies, so for collectors, this is the ultimate resource for information for those releases, from recording session data to official pressings and variant versions.

Also check out my official page at: myspace.com/geoffkresge for updates on what’s happening with my other projects. It doesn’t get updated as much as I’d like it to be, but keep checking in!

P: Thank you so very much for this interview, Geoff! We really appreciate all your time and wish you the best of luck!

GK: You’re welcome. Thanks to you too.

Introducing "Battled" Tournament of AFI Songs!

We’ve put 64 AFI songs into a championship bracket titled “Battled.” Over the next couple of weeks the songs will advance depending on your votes in polls on the sidebar, until at last we will have a champion. You can check out the bracket HERE and even fill it all out if you like. Below is an outline of how the rounds will work:

* First round: 8 matchups at a time, 24 hours each
* Second round: 4 matchups at a time, 24 hours each
* Sweet Sixteen: 4 matchups at a time, 24 hours each
* Elite Eight: 2 matchups at a time, 48 hours each
* Final Four: 2 matchups at a time, 72 hours each
* Championship: 1 matchup, 72 hours (can be extended if tied)

Many thanks to our staff member Mark for coming up with the name of the tournament as well as the bracket and names of the regions: “Desperate Streets,” “Midnight Runner,” “Shattered Seasons,” and “Poetry In Despair.”
Longtime readers of AFI News HQ may remember our last AFI song tournament back in the spring of 2009, which featured 128 songs. The Days of the Phoenix emerged as the ultimate winner. Can a song from Crash Love unseat it from its glory? Enjoy the voting and thanks for helping us find the fan favorite!

Beautiful Thieves 7" limited to 500 pressings

RecordStore.co.uk has put up the Beautiful Thieves 7″ for pre-order with additional information. The 7″ is limited to 500 copies and the b-side is numbered with an etching. You can purchase it here for the time being.

It will be officially released on April 12, 2010. There is no information about a bonus track yet, but we have been told by management that it will contain a bonus track.

A pre-sale occurred earlier this month but sold out within a few hours. Thanks to BrttnyD on the OMB for the find. The picture on this post is the artwork for this release.

UPDATE : Sold Out.

UPDATE : The AFI website has sent out a blast of emails prompting the pre – sale of the Beautiful Thieves 7′. The link given in the e-mail is also RecordStore.co.uk which you can find at the top of the post. The site indicts the vinyl will be back in stock soon.

Jade posts official Torch Song guitar tab

Jade has posted a guitar tab for Torch Song as he had promised before on his blog. His posts reads:

“I would recommend opening it in a Microsoft text file (.txt), to make sure it lines up correctly. There are some overdubs that I didn’t include but all of the main tracks are in there. Mangia!”

To download the tab go here.