JADE PUGET

It’s been a uniquely strange 18 months for all of us, but for musicians especially – having instantly grounded members of a profession more used to spending half the year or more on the road than they are sitting on their sofas at home. For veteran Californian punk-rockers AFI, however, the outbreak of the pandemic presented another dilemma. The four-piece had just put the finishing touches on their 11th studio album but, with the world shutting down, the band knew that there was little chance they’d be able to share it with the band’s hugely devoted fanbase in a live setting. Thus, Bodies was put on ice in the hope that normalcy would soon return. But they couldn’t wait forever.

“We were like, ‘Well, we don’t want to release this and not be able to tour, so let’s just wait and see what happens,’” Jade Puget, the band’s guitarist, co-songwriter and producer tells us from his home in California. “And then when it became clear that nothing was going to happen for a while, we just went, ‘We gotta put this out!’”

Bodies arrived belatedly in early June 2021. In contrast to 2017’s self-titled LP – also known as ‘The Blood Album’ – which saw Puget and frontman Davey Havok leaning heavily into the post-punk and new-wave sounds that had inspired them as teenagers, the band’s 11th full-length (and eighth since Puget joined the band in 1998) is something of a trip down memory lane. Throughout its 11 tracks, you’ll find nods to the various sonic territories that the band has explored over their first near-quarter of a century, from the hardcore and spooky punk of their early years to the polished, dramatic and electro-infused sounds that made the band platinum-sellers in the early 2000s.

It will make for a fun listening experience for longtime fans but Puget admits that the effect was totally unintentional.

“I think it’s more songwriting ADD, where all the songs sound very cohesive, and then sometimes you wanna hear something eclectic. I think we’re giving fans eclectic on this one.”