AFI unleashed a relentless storm of sound at Boston’s Citizens House of Blues, merging gothic energy and punk ferocity into an unforgettable night.
Fall temps have started to remind concertgoers to pack a hoodie for Lansdowne Street. The wind whips down the corridor, brushing through the line of fans waiting to get inside the Citizens House of Blues, cool enough to make you zip up, but not enough to dampen the excitement.
This week has been a full-on ping-pong match between venues. With Seether and Daughtry dominating MGM Music Hall earlier in the week, tonight we find ourselves across the street at the House of Blues for AFI.
Fans packed the venue early, eager to secure a good spot. That crowd energy worked in favor of opener TR/ST, who took the stage promptly at 8:15 PM, ready to pull the audience into his electronic dreamscape. The Canadian artist, born Robert Alfons, fuses synth-pop and confessional darkwave, creating a sound both intimate and expansive. His performance pulsed with heavy drumbeats and hypnotic synth layers, bridging psychedelia and emotion. It was the perfect sonic setup for AFI’s intensity to follow.
As the stagehands finished tuning the instruments, the crowd began chanting the opening lines of “Strength Through Wounding,” “Through our bleeding, we are one. Through the darkness, we are one.” The room swelled with anticipation before a single note was even played. Moments later, AFI took the stage just after 9:15 PM, launching straight into the song itself. The roar that followed could have rattled the Fenway bleachers across the street, hands in the air, voices rising, the entire venue feeding off the band’s intensity from the very first note.
What followed was a set that perfectly balanced eras and emotion. They ripped through “Girl’s Not Grey” from the 2003 album Sing the Sorrow and “Love Like Winter” from 2006’s Decemberunderground early in the night, setting the tone with pulsing lights and an explosion of sound. If there was any question in the fans’ minds about how immersive the show would be, it was quickly answered. Havok was locked in and ready to interact with them all night. Their latest single, “Holy Visions” from the new album Silver Bleeds the Black Sun, came next, fresh off the release of its haunting new music video — instantly sparking recognition from fans who sang every word.
From the moment they took the stage, Davey Havok and company owned every inch of it. Havok moved with a captivating fluidity, somewhere between Jim Morrison’s poetic chaos and Robert Smith’s haunting grace, with flashes of Bad Religion’s punk ferocity and Skinny Puppy’s industrial edge. He sprinted from side to side, leaping onto platforms, reaching into the pit, and locking eyes with fans who knew every lyric.
The biggest moment of the night came during “I Hope You Suffer” from the 2013 album Burials. Midway through the song, Havok stepped off the stage and into the crowd, balancing effortlessly as fans reached up, not just to touch him, but to hold him steady as he sang. The moment was electric and communal; the House of Blues erupted as hundreds of voices screamed the chorus back at him. It was the kind of exchange between artist and audience that can only happen in a room like this, intimate, chaotic, and deeply human.
The band kept the surprises coming with “3 ½” from 1999’s All Hallows EP, performed live for the first time since 2017, before unveiling the live debut of “A World Unmade” from the new album.
By mid-set, the audience was fully immersed, voices rising louder than Havok’s at times, echoing back every “Woo-oh-oh-oh!” The lights danced across the stage as Havok repeatedly held out the mic, letting the crowd carry entire choruses. From the barricade to the balcony, fans were locked in, crowd-surfing, shouting, and celebrating every era of the band’s career.
AFI returned for a powerful encore featuring “The Bird of Prey” from Burials, “The Days of the Phoenix” from 2000’s The Art of Drowning, and closing with the timeless “Silver and Cold” from Sing the Sorrow. The crowd sang every word like a collective heartbeat, proof that AFI’s legacy continues to resonate just as fiercely as it did thirty years ago.
Emerging from the early California hardcore punk scene in 1991, AFI, short for A Fire Inside, built their name the old-fashioned way: relentless touring, unflinching honesty, and a sound that refused to be boxed in. Their early records like 1995’s Answer That and Stay Fashionable and 1996’s Very Proud of Ya carried raw punk urgency before the band began blending darker, more melodic tones on 1999’s Black Sails in the Sunset and The Art of Drowning. Their major-label breakthrough came with Sing the Sorrow in 2003, an album that introduced them to the mainstream while solidifying their place as one of the most influential acts in alternative music.
Over the decades, AFI has shape-shifted through goth, punk, emo, and industrial, without ever losing the intensity that defines their sound. Their latest album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun, released October 3, continues that evolution, merging introspection with cinematic depth. It’s proof that AFI is constantly evolving. Even after 12 studio albums and 10 EPs, the band remains as vital, theatrical, and emotionally charged as ever.
It’s rare to see a band 30 years in still perform with this level of conviction. AFI doesn’t just play live, they embody it. And in Boston, they proved once again that their fire burns just as fiercely as it did in the beginning.
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