AFI’s twelfth studio album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, dropped on October 3, 2025 via Run for Cover across LP, CD, and digital formats.
From the opening strains of “The Bird of Prey,” the band signal a purposeful shift into post-punk and goth textures. Guitars shimmer with echo, drums echo cavernously, and Davey Havok’s voice weaves between baritone croons and haunting falsetto. This isn’t AFI clinging to their past — it’s AFI reimagined.
The album leans fully into mood and atmosphere. Tracks like “Holy Visions” and “Behind the Clock” feel like propulsive gothic anthems, their darkness tempered by moments of clarity and melodic lift. The band doesn’t hide their influences: echoes of The Cure, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, and classic goth rock permeate the record. Clash describes it as “beautifully capturing the continuous draw toward the Gothic”.
Yet Silver Bleeds… isn’t just homage — it’s a confident stride into new territory. The production is cleaner, more deliberate. The Soundboard Reviews notes that where past albums felt tentative, this one brims with confidence: “the key difference … are made known almost immediately… it sounds freshly exhumed”. Even in its rougher corners — seesawing shifts, darker interludes — the album has a cohesiveness that binds its parts into something more than the sum of its influences.
If there is a critique, it’s that at times the atmospheric weight overshadows individual hooks. A few tracks blend into one another under the gothic blur. But for a band so long-established, making bold moves like this is its own victory.
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… is AFI at a late-career peak: moody, daring, and fully in control of their own shadows. Listen below and let us know your thoughts.