A Fire Inside has been going strong for thirty-plus years and has eleven full-lengths, various questionable and/or unquestionable haircuts, and several EPs/live records/compilations to speak for it. Easily one of our favorite bands without exaggeration to 100% completely and utterly subjectively rank albums for. AFI, with or without periods, started with humble beginnings, eventually signed with a major label, successfully debuted at number one on Billboard with our #5 entry, and still packs venues to an extremely loyal fanbase of lost souls this very day. Today’s lesson: Catch a hot one, smile, then despair.
11. Answer That and Stay Fashionable (1995)
An oldie isn’t always a goodie, but even “bad” AFI is good without quotes. We know, we gaffed and AFI’s 1995 debut studio record “Answer That and Stay Fashionable” should be the number one ranked LP here, actually we can’t even make it through this sentence without unsuccessfully asking our mom for permission to do so, gasping, laughing, falling down, and turning ill. While your favorite release is completely contingent on where you were in your respective life when you discovered the band, this album is a good intro to your friend and mine about a band with an expansive catalog, but that’s about it.
Play it again: “I Wanna Get a Mohawk (But Mom Won’t Let Me Get One)”
Skip it: “Kung-Fu Devil”
10. Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes (1997)
Northern California’s AFI formed in 1991 and subsequently released four albums in the 1990s. In a predictable manner to us and a possibly unpredictable one to you, the first three records to come out are the first three to be mentioned in this piece; this fact that is an opinion will likely make you close your eyes and open your mouth, but honestly you should lower your head and take it in the body. However, this entry is actually their third full-length and the next one to be featured is their second, showing you, the avid reader, that we put some intricate and delicate thought into this here list. You’re welcome; the devil loves you. Anyway, to add salt for your wounds, the best part about this one is the fantastic LP that directly followed it in 1999. More on that punk classic later!
Play it again: “A Single Second”
Skip it: “pH Low”
9. Very Proud of Ya (1996)
AFI’s 1996’s LP “Very Proud of Ya” is the band’s sophomore release, and as a wake-up call to all of you misguided and bitter Despair Faction members, it’s their best effort of the first three records; yep. While it admittedly has way too many songs, in fact, the most tracks on any of the band’s total albums, the longest tune clocks at at two-minutes and forty-five seconds, so if you’re not a fan of a particular entry, advances in modern technology would permit you to either skip or cruise control through it. Basically 1995-1997 were adolescent years for the group, and they finally hit their adult stride on the self-titled EP that came out one year later, but as you know, that is not technically an album, so if you’re looking for its ranking here, think again, pleeb. To close this trilogy that isn’t as good as “The Godfather” trilogy, but arguably better than part three, “Very Proud of Ya” is the last album from the band that wasn’t truly consistent from its nascent start to its bitter end.
Play it again: “Advances in Modern Technology”
Skip it: “Shatty Fatmas”
8. Self-Titled (also referred to as The Blood Album) (2017)
Self-titled records are often a combination or an inkling of a valiant return to form, a strategic back-to-basics vibe, and, to be quite frank, the lack of a good name suggestion for an album. While you can decide in the comments which of these AFI’s 2017 LP actually is or isn’t, and we know that you dumb kids actually will, one thing’s for sure, the blood on this record literally runs thick, and there is a plethora of sonic influences over the course of its fourteen tracks. That is definitely not a bad thing, but the other seven records just did it better. We’re gonna end this section with an Easter Egg from the extremely serious and rarely comedic group known as A Fire Inside: AFI has a song on “The BLOOD Album” called “Above the Bridge” and Red Hot Chili Peppers have a song called “Under The Bridge” on their blockbuster “BLOOD Sugar Sex Magik” record. Woah! California!
Play it again: “Snow Cats”
Skip it: “White Offerings”
7. Bodies (2021)
In an effort to showcase a huge case of low-hanging and possibly spoiled fruit, Drowning Pool did it first in their megahit butt-rock single twenty years before 2021’s AFI record “Bodies,” but this most recent album effort from the band with three letters as its band name is the first of two one-word albums starting with the letter “B” to be sequentially listed here. Speaking of the letter “B,” one more five-word album from the band to be mentioned later also starts with “B” and it is a bodacious entry at that! Back to “Bodies,” this record is the group’s shortest album of their career to be released after 1997, and truly, truly leaves the listener wanting more, which is good or bad depending on who is writing an album ranking article for your twisted tongues. We’ll check out your blog later and subsequently toast to the band’s next eleven LPs!
Play it again: “Dulceria”
Skip it: “Back From The Flesh”
6. Burials (2013)
Gil Norton produced several rad and sonically perfect LPs for Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, Pixies, Echo & the Bunnymen, and many, many more bands that even your anxious and bitter punk rock hearts secretly and not-so-secretly love. Gil sat behind the boards for 2013’s “Burials,” and along with the number two entry in this article is one of the more underrated AFI albums in their expansive catalog, and it won’t likely start a deep slow panic to admit that the record is definitely the most unappreciated one to be listed thus far. Wild! Last words of the runaway: “Burials” is as dark as its album title suggests, and so, so much catchier than most bands could ever hope to be in or around the scene. Our hope for forgiveness dies.
Play it again: “I Hope You Suffer”
Skip it: “Wild”
5. Decemberunderground (2006)
Here’s a true summer shudder to all of you fools about a cold (love-like) Winter album title: You’re so right, this one should at the very least be a medal winner in the golden #1, silver #2, or bronze #3 slot in this piece, but we’re not apologizing as your negative comments light a fire inside. Sorry not sorry: Number five is what it is and we’re the final word on a piece that we write. Yep. Still, 2016’s “Decemberunderground” really rips, and it likely introduced many to the four-piece known as AFI; much respect. It’s also badass that this record topped the album charts, and it’s even cooler that seventeen years after the album came out, “Miss Murder” STILL gets constant radio love to the masses. Simply a look can break your heart.
Play it again: “Prelude 12/21”
Skip it: “37mm”
4. Black Sails in the Sunset (1999)
Ranks 11-9 are the band’s first three albums from the 90s, and 8-5 are all from this century, so how did we do so far? Answer that and… yeah, no. 1999’s “Black Sails in the Sunset” is the last album of the 20th century to be mentioned in this piece, and the songs still truly hold up today! Who knew? Bad Religion certainly doesn’t hold a monopoly on chanting, and AFI opens this record up by discussing our album rankings in this article by shouting, “Through our bleeding we are four! Through our bleeding we are four!” At a glance, this hilarious joke references its fourth slot position, and the actual number of people in the raucous and revered rock-and-roll band AFI. Say the titles of tracks 2-4 on this record out loud three times fast and jump down to the next section!
Play it again: “God Called in Sick Today” and then fast forward to the bonus track “Midnight Sun”; what came forth from the remains?
Skip it: “At A Glance”
3. The Art of Drowning (2000)
AFI kicked off this century with “The Art of Drowning” on September 19, 2000, and the punk world hasn’t been the same in the best way since. This LP is the band’s last album to be solely released on Dexter “The singer and the guitarist for The Offspring and a licensed pilot who has a doctorate in molecular biology and who wrote ‘Original Prankster’ in case you forgot” Holland’s Nitro Records before inking a deal with the now-defunct DreamWorks Records, which eventually folded into Geffen Records and later merged into the Interscope Geffen A&M Records group. That’s a mouthful of greetings and goodbyes. Two albums before the group’s eventual #1 slot on Billboard (and #5 slot over here), this record is their first to chart in the top 200, providing the charts with an initiation for the lost souls. SMILE!
Play it again: “Morningstar ”
Skip it: “Catch a Hot One”
2. Crash Love (2009)
This may ruffle some feathers, rather, this may (and this is foreshadowing to the #1 spot below) modify various makeshift wings, but we don’t do this for your (crash) love; we solely do it for your bitter non-beautiful comments, dorks. As we mentioned and alluded to in the handy-dandy “Burials” section a mere four positions above, 2009’s “Crash Love” may just be AFI’s most underrated album, and your anger on this position proves said opinion as fact. SACRILEGE! If this truly offends you, just medicate, and then you will say, “Okay, I feel better now.” Anyway, “Crash Love” is the band’s last album since “The Art of Drowning” to have less than three singles, which successfully proved that the fourpiece’s label ended transmission and gave up on this one way too soon, which is a shame given how flawless it is. If you had a chance to see AFI open for Green Day on this record’s (and GD’s also underrated “21st Century Breakdown” LP’s) cycle, throw your arms into the sky!
Play it again: “End Transmission”
Skip it: This is the first of two “skip it” sections to recommend that you don’t in fact “skip shit”
1. Sing the Sorrow (2003)
This time imperfect: We know that millions of diehard AFI fans will flock to read these rankings, but even hardcore and misguided ‘90s AFI indie label fans have to legally admit that this major-label debut is the band’s most superior album front-to-back. You can’t be mad at this placement, but you will be! Come. On. Now. The band’s eventual platinum-selling and perfect sans any filler LP “Sing the Sorrow” hit stores/MTV/radio/random cool supermarkets and head shops in March of 2003, and successfully found a way to unite both a plethora of old and new fans of the group, being FAR from a great disappointment. This celluloid dream is extremely rare when bands make a jump to the big leagues, and you’ve gotta give the band mad props for doing so.
Play it again: The whole thing front-to-back
Skip it: It would be a great disappointment if you skipped any songs from this record
Surrender to the fact that at some point in your tenure here, you’re going to have to listen to him play guitar. This, for many, is the hardest step.
He’s called you in, after all, and if he’s bringing a guitar to the office every day, he probably has some serious rank in this company.
This will only lead to the following: “Wait, you like Pearl Jam?” and (picking up the guitar): “Okay, check this out.” (It won’t even be “good” Pearl Jam. He’s into, like, “Binaural.”)
When he asks who your musical influences are, it’s a clear “baiting” tactic to get you to ask him about his. Don’t go for it. Before you know it, you’ll be looking at an empty guitar holder—like the scene in “Jurassic Park” where the goat is missing and its chain is swinging back and forth. CUT TO: Your colleague is holding the guitar.
He’ll just pick up the guitar and say, “This IS the project.”
Tip back in the chair and give yourself a concussion. When you throw up, try to do it on the guitar. This might not sit well with your coworker at first, but he’ll understand eventually, and it will buy you—and your colleagues—some much-needed time.
When he gets the guitar back from the shop, he’ll want to show it to you. Appear confused. Say you don’t know what “that” is. Imply that the concussion has maybe erased part of your memory. When he says the guitar plays “music,” shake your head. This will lead him to “teaching” you, which in turn will lead to . . . Fuck. Too late.
Realize it’s not about you anymore: You’re taking one for the team. Your other colleagues have kids, mortgages, real problems. You can tough this out for the next thirty to forty-five minutes. Could be an hour and a half. You might want to think about other things. Don’t. There will be a quiz at the end.
This could indeed be your biggest contribution to the company.
You earned it.
Born in Reno, Nevada, Stern Hanson was amongst the most dedicated members of the Reno scene, much to the scene’s detriment. Kevin Seconds once referred to him as “that weird dude who always uses way too much eye contact.”
Born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Wallace Klenzendorf was born with his arms already crossed judgmentally. He allegedly learned to scowl before he learned to crawl.
Grimhilde Futz was born in Hamburg, Germany, and was near immediately abandoned by her parents out of sheer terror. She was raised by a coalition of anarchist chimney sweeps who had originally mistaken her for a creepy Victorian doll.
For someone whose rejection of capitalist ideology has been his whole thing (some might say annoyingly so) this seems like it should be an obvious dead last. No way would Scoutmaster Henry even have an interest in attempting this one, let alone ever being able to shake that punk ethos long enough to make it through just one requirement.
Can the Scout build a double A-frame suspension bridge using only split timbers and natural fiber rope? No. No, of course not. But it would be very very entertaining to watch those dusty kielbasa fingers of his try.
When you’re in one of the earliest punk bands who are notorious for having their shows broken up by bible-thumping protestors and militarized cops then it’s fair to say that crime prevention isn’t high on your agenda. His stick-and-poke ACAB tattoo would probably be good for a crafting merit badge though.
Can you even imagine Henry Rollins sitting up on horseback? Like full-on with the bandana and the hat and the boots and the “giddy-up, giddy up!” If you haven’t already, it’s well worth trying. But regardless, no matter which way we think of it, attempting this badge always ends badly for the Scout. However, Rick Ta Life would be great at this one.
This badge is not really the best for the Scout. Really, we can’t even see him enjoying sniffing the permanent markers for sketching storyboards while earning this badge, so it’s likely he would never even try it in the first place.
We’re gonna go out on a limb here and assume that the “American heritage” that makes up the Boy Scouts’ curriculum has some pretty stark contradictions to what we learned going to Bad Religion shows. Scoutmaster Henry would make a valiant effort at this one, but ultimately there’s no way he’ll be able “to define what American freedom means” to him without going into some long weird rant about the Bay of Pigs.
It’s hard to say what would be more of an impediment to the scout in earning this merit badge. Is it his pseudo-pacifist lifestyle and disdain of modern gun culture, or simply the logistics of somehow wrapping his medicine ball-sized head around a rifle sight? Either way, there’s no chance he’s getting this one in the ten ring.
Seriously, how the fuck is this a merit badge? Are the Boy Scouts grooming recruits for the next Manhattan Project? Scoutmaster Henry is a smart guy but it’s doubtful he’d be able to design the plans for a functioning fission reactor on his own. Plus, ‘80s punks weren’t always the fondest of nuclear energy, so it’s unlikely he would thrive with this badge.
Here’s another one of those badges where Scoutmaster Henry would spend the whole time he was supposed to be working on it just complaining about how only an elite few have the inherent privilege of being able to afford such a resource-consuming hobby in the first place. Of course it would all be a show to cover up for him not being able to get the boots to fit on right.
This one is less of a merit badge and more just a vague concept. Nevertheless, Scoutmaster Henry is not necessarily a play-it-safe type scout. So the campsite is gonna be real fast and loose safety-wise until he figures this one out.
As it says in Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War,’ “Don’t play chess against a computer, once those are invented, because they are all cheating, electric bastards.” But the scout wouldn’t take that advice as he has never met an opponent he would not gladly try to conquer. As such, he has already failed the first prerequisite for the chess merit badge.
Man, fuck this country! Scoutmaster Henry would absolutely fucking hate this badge. But having toured extensively, he at least wouldn’t be wholly incompetent at it.
Much like the horsemanship merit badge, the image of Henry Rollins sitting up on a tractor in a pair of denim overalls with a cheek full of Skoal is just a delight to us. But also like horsemanship, we have absolutely no confidence that once he gets up there that he will have even the slightest clue how to operate a combine harvester.
We’re pretty sure this is that thing where you leave a bunch of shit in one of those plastic tubes that you use in the drive-thru at the bank and then bury it and then later other people have to use GPS to go find it and usually it’s like a note or a little trinket or something in the tube. God, what a stupid fucking activity. Scoutmaster Henry wouldn’t waste his time on that crap.
Despite having spent a substantial amount of his career in the music business, or “the biz” if you’re on cocaine currently, the Scout has very little prior experience with the bugle as an instrument. We’re sure he could probably learn, but if we’re guessing he’d probably do better with any instrument that has buttons.
Let it never be said that Scoutmaster Henry doesn’t care about the environment. He’d certainly make his best effort to understand the science of flora while working on this badge. Unfortunately, yelling at a hibiscus that it needs to “push it to the limit” and “work the lats” is not the kind of growth that plants crave.
Scoutmaster Henry doesn’t seem like much of a water guy. He could probably paddle pretty hard (albeit always to the beat of the Misfits “Hybrid Moments”), but the first bit of choppy surf that hits him and that top-heavy moose of a man is definitely going overboard. Maybe rowboating would be more his speed, but for finesse watercraft he probably doesn’t have the prerequisites.
Here’s another one that its mere existence is pretty baffling? How does the Scout feel about industrial mining? Probably not too enthusiastic. But if this badge is about how anthracite extraction has impacted the modern labor movement then he may be able to figure out at least a few requirements before he absolutely loses his shit about clean coal legislation.
It’s hard to locate a missing person when the entire time you’re supposed to be stomping around the forest, screaming their name, you’re instead telling the lead paramedics about all the times you’ve seen ambulances called to unruly Black Flag shows in the ‘80s. To Scoutmaster Henry’s credit he does have some impressive stamina, which we think would aid him in a long-haul search for the Nordic metal band that got lost during a photo shoot.
Same argument here as for the rifle shooting badge (see above), but we gotta admit he probably has a much better chance of success with a firearm that requires, how should we put this, “less precision.” Honestly, if you just taped a picture of Ronald Reagan’s face onto a target or tell him a few of those clay pigeons they fling up into the air voted in favor of invading Iraq then the Scout would have no issue picking up a shotgun and blasting a fistful of buckshot down range. 