The 5th Column Street Team Returns!

Some older AFI fans may remember the days of the 5th Column Street Team, an official group of people around the world who promoted AFI in their hometowns by completing "missions." The group is now defunct, but we've decided to bring in back in anticipation of the next AFI album cycle. We want to spread the word about AFI and bring new fans into the community.

Right now we're beginning to gather the troops in a Facebook group. When anticipation for the 9th AFI album begins to heat up, we'll be posting instructions for "missions" that you can complete in your own town. Join us on this Facebook group today and let us know where you're from. We can't wait to meet you all and get organizing for the return of a bigger and better 5th Column Street Team!

Through our bleeding we are one,
-AFI News HQ Staff

Wanted: AFI News HQ T-Shirt Design Submissions

Recently we asked if you would be interested in some AFI News HQ t-shirts. Many of you responded in the affirmative. As a result we have decided to move ahead to the design phase, and that's where you graphic design enthusiasts come in. Send your submissions to jason@afinewshq.com by next Thursday, August 11, 2011. Please refer to the guidelines before submitting.

After submissions close, we will pick our three favorites and post them for voting on our Facebook page, where the number of likes will determine the winning design. That design will be printed on a limited edition shirt that will go on sale very soon. We will be selling these at a certifiably insane $7.00 in order to raise money for our AFI Ignite hosting costs and prizes for future contests. If you enjoy the service we provide, please consider supporting us.

GUIDELINES:

• Must include "AFI News HQ" and some other artistic element
• Maximum of 3 different colors (background is black)
• Medium width and height design, not a full graphic tee
• You may NOT use any licensed AFI logos or art
• You may NOT use the band members' faces
• Submit as many designs as you like
• Good luck, and we look forward to seeing your creativity!

Mobile Versions of AFI News HQ and AFI Ignite!

We're pleased to announce new mobile versions of our sites that have been optimized for small displays. Some of you may have already seen the spiffy mobile version AFI News HQ, which has been around for a couple of weeks. But the new mobile version of AFI Ignite just went live this morning.

The AFI News HQ mobile version puts the focus on the news, with a dead simple interface for reading the latest stories and posting comments. The AFI Ignite mobile version has organized our vast amount of multimedia and information in a very easily navigable interface. Look through photo and video galleries, tab through the encyclopedic Maelstrom, browse our entire complete discography, and more.

When you visit either site on your mobile device, you will automatically access the mobile version, but the full-functioning sites are also available. We hope this makes your mobile experience easier. Enjoy!

Beta: The AFI News HQ Community!

We are working on a new community for our readers. We have been testing it with a few people and have now decided that it is ready to go beta!

Testing the community would filling out a profile and starting a thread or two in the forum, then reporting any glitches to us. If you would like to start testing the community please email James@AFINewsHQ.com with a bit about yourself and why you think you would be a good beta tester!

The Cult Status: AFI News HQ's Reader Survey

We recently built a Reader Survey, and we would really appreciate it if you would take a minute or two of your time to fill it out. Getting feedback from you is very important to us!

Thanks!

-The AFI News HQ Staff

Update: 2011

First of all, happy new year! We hope you all have a great year in 2011 and stay committed to your new year's resolutions!

In 2010 many things happened in the AFI world, with tours ranging from the West Coast to Japan, Australia, Europe, a few brief stints on the East Coast and last but not least, a tour with Green Day in August that gained a fair share of new fans.

Of course where would we be without mentioning that AFI kicked off 2010 with their first show in 8 years at The Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, CA, with support from Ceremony (Ceremony also opened the rest of the January tour) and Wolves and Thieves? It is after all, the closest thing they have to a hometown venue. AFI's performance there symbolized more than just another show for them. Hunter casually strolled into the lobby of the venue accompanied by his former bandmates from The Force only half an hour after the show ended to chat with fans. Everyone was relaxed. Adam made a brief visit as well. It was definitely a great kickoff for the year 2010.

Things only got better, AFI played Soundwave Festival in Australia along with Gallows, Jane's addiction and many other bands. The festival tour ended with Adam performing in a drum circle during the last set Jane's Addiction was playing on the tour, which Adam has stated is one of the highlights of his life.

In March AFI toured the Southeast with Scarlet Grey and The Loved Ones, and at the end of the month a show at Slim's in San Fransisco, where they played several songs that hadn't been played in years, including Coin Return and Theory of Revolution. It also marked the return of ...But Home is Nowhere to occasional setlists. AFI Went on to tour Europe in April, making stops in the UK with Sick of it All and Dear & Departed. Italy, Germany, Austria and for the first time ever, Poland where they were called back for a second encore by dedicated Polish fans!

A brief May and June tour of 6 or 7 dates followed, then a few months to rest before the Green Day tour. The tour kicked off on August 3rd in New Jersey, with AFI performing 11 songs. This was the longest set on the tour, every show after that date had only 10 songs, no songs older than 2003 were played. A stop at Lollapalooza on August 7th was included with a 14 song setlist, and a few oldies mixed in. The tour can be viewed as a mild success for AFI as a few fans were gained. A month after the tour started, on September 4th, the Crash Love era officially ended.

Fast forward to October 29th, Blaqk Audio played their first show since 2008 at the Cow Palace in San Fransisco, followed by one in San Diego the next night. On January 6th they will perform at Popscene, again in San Fransisco. Meanwhile, Bright Black Heaven is on hold as it is rumored Blaqk Audio was dropped from Interscope Records a few months ago.

As we enter our third year this February we plan on continuing to bring you news, interviews, contests and more from AFI and Blaqk Audio during 2011 as AFI's only official fansite and news source! Thank you for sticking with us throughout 2010 and continuing on into 2011 and beyond!

Davey and Jade at Melkweg, Amsterdam 8/26/09. Image used with permission from Nadia Natario. Please do not copy or use this image without her consent.

Welcome To Our New Affiliate!

We have a new affiliate, Schwarze Segel, a German fan site that provides news and info about AFI. They run a great site so please visit them if you speak German! They've been around since 2005, so definitely check out their database and forum!

AFINewsHQ Video Podcast Update

Have you checked out the AFI News HQ video podcast? It has had over 60,000 downloads so far! The podcast features videos of AFI performing live from 1994 to 2010, including very rare videos. A new video will be posted every Wednesday.

You can view and download the videos through iTunes or download them straight to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Click here for the iTunes link

For those on the Zune network click here.Thanks to Brittany for the link :)

You can also stream the podcast, at lower quality, right here on AFINewsHQ.com:

AFI News HQ staff contact info updates

We've finally got custom e-mails for ourselves, so please make sure that if you have any news tip for Blaqk Audio and/or AFI, you send them to:

Jason@afinewshq.com
Pablo@afinewshq.com
James@afinewshq.com
Mike@afinewshq.com

Our writers will get custom e-mails as soon as possible as well!

Do not miss the Blaqk Audio full show video rip I'll do this weekend! :)

Send Us Your Questions for Jade

We are going to be interviewing Jade next week at the show in Arizona and are open to some suggestions for questions to ask. Leave questions in the comments of this post. We will be picking only a few, so make them good! :)

Crash Love Song Mini-Tournament

We've done two large song tournaments, one in Spring 2009 with all of AFI's songs, and then another one in Spring 2010 with 64 songs. Both were great successes in participation, so we've decided to apply it on a smaller scale to Crash Love!

We'll be using the 16 songs recorded and released from the sessions, but the rounds will be a bit different from years' past in order to speed things along. There will initially be 4 groups of 4 songs each, and from each of these 2 songs will advance to the quarterfinals. At that point there will be one-on-one matchups until we have a winner.

Help Us Help One of Our Own

Hey Guys,

For those of you who didn't know, Mike's cousin was killed in a car crash a few months ago and him as well as his family are having trouble finding funds for memorial services. Currently, Mike needs $1,000 to create a memorial plaque commemorating his cousin. Mike is currently trying to sell many of his AFI related possessions that he owns. One in particular is his custom Crash Love guitar that is signed by the band. Mike won the guitar when he won the Etch Love contest, held by the band a few months ago and it is something that he loves dearly. We, at AFI News HQ, don't want Mike to sell something that he values so much and we want to help him out. Therefore, we are accepting donations to help him pay for memorial costs. Any donation would be appreciated! We are also bidding off a few of our own personal items to help raise money. A new item will be posted every few days on the left sidebar. If you want the item, simply email us with how much you are willing to pay. The top buyer at the end of 5 days will receive the item. First up is a never used Art of Drowning CD. If interested, email us with the price you are willing to pay. 100% of the proceeds will go towards Mike and his family. Our hearts and prayers go out to Mike and his family. Thanks!

- The AFI News HQ Team




For information regarding the death of Mike's cousin, please click here.

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

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

AFI News HQ's Cover Contest Winners

After pouring over countless entries, we have chosen our 2 winners for our Cover Contest. Your task was to upload a YouTube video of yourself covering an AFI song and boy did you guys impress us! Our 2 winners, who will be receiving an autographed Crash Love booklet signed by the band, are Mike Torres with his cover of Morningstar and YouTube user worldofviolets1920 with his cover of Silver and Cold.

Because there were so many amazing entries, we'll be posting honorable mentions very soon...

Mike Torres' "Morningstar" cover:

VIDEO CANNOT BE FOUND


Worldofviolets1920's "Silver and Cold" cover:



To our winners, please email us at afinewshq@gmail.com with your mailing address. Thank you to everyone who participated and if you have suggestions for our next contest, let us know in the comments! Congratulations to our winners!

Stream The AFI News HQ Video Podcast

If you do not have iTunes and would like the see what is going on with the AFI News HQ Podcast, you can check it out below. You can click the next arrow button on the video player to see all of the podcasts. It will update every time we add new podcasts. Enjoy :) If you have a blog, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. please feel free to share the link or embed the video player.


For higher quality versions of the podcasts, download them through iTunes. We've had over 14,000 downloads in our first few weeks alone!

Interview Series: Mike Interviews Hunter, Pt. 1

Here's the fourth episode in our exclusive Answer That and Stay Fashionable Interview Series with all four members of AFI. In part 1 of Mike's 2-part interview, he had the pleasure of interviewing Hunter at Bamboozle, where they discuss Hunter Revenge, performing live, memories from the early days with AFI, and his upcoming book.

Interview Series: Jason Interviews Adam, Pt. 3

Here's the third episode in our exclusive Answer That and Stay Fashionable Interview Series with all four members of AFI. In part 3 of Jason's 3-part interview with Adam, he discusses The View From Here, the process of creating "But Home Is Nowhere," countries he would like to tour in, the upcoming Green Day tour, and the location of the world's best Key Lime Pie. Also, Adam's middle name will be revealed for the first time ever...

"Battled" Song Tournament Over, This Time Imperfect Reigns Supreme

Our "Battled" tournament has officially come to an end after weeks of match-ups to determine the best AFI song. The championship round began yesterday with a heated battle between "This Time Imperfect" and "...But Home Is Nowhere." After the staggering 751 votes were tabulated, "This Time Imperfect" won by a mere one vote!

Thank you to everyone who partook in the tournament and we hope to have more fun activities like this in the future.