Davey Havok – AFI 'If You Force It, It's Gonna Be Junk'

“A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all.” – Paul Cézanne.

This powerful statement from the prolific French Post-Impressionist painter is certainly provocative. Whilst upholding a definitive finesse, it also has the potential to in fact, raise more questions than actually exhibit assertiveness. Simplified, the above quotation suggests that “art requires feeling to be classified as art”, and undeniably these two subjects are attached by an immeasurable bond.

However, to what extent does “art” rely on “feeling”? Is it through the artists’ minds and souls when they are creating? Or is it the observers’ reactions to the art that authorises the categorisation?

Is feeling the only true qualification? One could even submit that “art” is to a greater extent, a question more than a resolve.

This was also part of the brilliance of Paul Cézanne, his creativity reconstructed conventional approaches to perspective, and broke traditional rules of academic art influenced by avant-garde movements. Monsieur Cézanne fractured customary principles, altered perspective, promoted questioning, challenged convention, and inspired feelings of a different nature.

It could be argued that he was the “punk rock painter” of the late 19^th and early 20^th century.

‍A Fire Inside’s Davey Havok probably doesn’t consider himself a “punk rock painter”, but an immeasurable number of AFI devotees around Planet Earth would undoubtedly classify him as a “punk rock artist”. Truth be told, many would in all probability consider him “punk rock divinity”.

After a phenomenal 34-year history including 11 studio albums, multiple MTV Video Music Awards, platinum and double platinum sales worldwide, a number one position on the highly revered Billboard 200 for DecemberUnderground, and more global touring than a retired airline pilot, with sold out tours and shows in practically every country A Fire Inside have visited - justifiably, their art unequivocally embodies more than feelings. AFI authentically project music that is irresistibly enchanting with fervency.

Remarkably, every full-length illustrates another chapter in the four-piece’s prodigious sound evolution. Drummer Adam Carson, bassist Hunter Burgan, guitarist Jade Puget, and the distinguished vocalist Mr. Havok utilise their musings, spiritus mundi, assimilated energies and feelings to direct their artistic progression time and time again. Their soon-to-be released 12^th LP entitled Silver Bleeds the Black Sun... is yet another wondrous advancement in the quartet’s sonic landscape. Another metamorphosis graduating into the delightful depths of the post-punk realm, with connections to Joy Division, David Bowie, and The Cure. However, there is a breathtaking furtherance into the expanses of David Lynch, New Order and even industrial-pop atmospheres, that unveil charismatic complexities breaking new grounds for the Californian punk luminaries.

As Wall Of Sound makes contact with the vivacious vocalist Davey Havok, he radiates a vibrant harmony. Davey’s splendour is soaked in marvellous mischief, and his aura is unmistakably captivating. It’s above understandable, his excitement and connection to the 10 tracks that shape Silver Bleeds the Black Sun... has Mr. Havok at a new level of fulfilment.

“I've mentioned this in the past couple of interviews, but my relationship to this album is very unique. When I listen to this album, it's a hard to define unique experience where I can hear this album, and feel it – both… It's very much a representation of me and of us AFI. But I can, I also hear it from a distant, a remote perspective, where it also speaks to me, in a way, as if I had nothing to do with it.” He pauses, as if reflecting on the record and falling under a spell of enraptured hypnosis, then continues – “That sounds esoteric, and yes, perhaps a bit outrageous, but I've never felt that before with anything I have created, in fact, typically, and I've said this before, when I listen down to music that I've made, to get ready to tour it, and to get ready to rehearse it. I don't want… I find myself, you know, doing it a couple times, being like: ‘Fuck. I really would like to stop listening to myself.’ [laughs] And I've yet to hit that with this. And I don't think I will. I just have a different relationship with this record. It's very fulfilling in a unique way.”

A “unique experience where I can hear this album, and FEEL it…”

The proven “art” comes to glistening-punk light through the expanses of Paul Cézanne and Davey Havok.

That aforementioned “feeling” was momentously encountered throughout the Earth’s musical sphere on August 5, 2025. A Fire Inside unveiled their new chapter, with the introduction being the lead single: ‘Behind The Clock’. As this very publication described, the tantalising track showcased a wondrous post punk exploration “Driven by gloom, yet glowing in its darkness”. Sensational sprinklings of Joy Division’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition’, The Crow soundtrack (and film), and Cold Cave are all fantastically fused into this entrancing composition, but with so much more amazing articulation. This expansion and musical ravishment flows poetically throughout the LP. Exceptionally though, it is still uniquely, AFI.

“I couldn't be happier with it. And the context of the record is where in that distinction comes, the context of the whole record, having that continuity. Because something like ‘Behind The Clock’, which may forever be my favourite song that I've ever been a part of creating.” He admits with a delighted giggle, then elaborates further – “Something like ‘Behind The Clock’ could have come about in a writing session. But traditionally, we wouldn't have stayed in that world. We would write a ‘Behind The Clock’, and then we would write something else that was sure not anywhere as close to ‘Behind The Clock’ as the rest of the work that you hear on Silver Feeds The Black Sun…

‍“So keeping within this shadowy path that we traversed, that we navigated through its creation, I think really, really benefited us. You know, it really benefited the writing process.

And in the end, allowed for a very contextually unique work for AFI, and I love it so much. Oh my god, I love it.

I wish I could just go play the record front to back.”

“Shadowy path” is an unequivocally vivid description of album number twelve for the Californians, but that is not to say that the record is inherently a journey through melancholia. Far from it. New single ‘Holy Visions’ has the glossy glamour of earlier Killing Joke in their new wave prime, with a majestic medley of 80’s dance, and astonishingly pop-hardcore gang-vocals that magnetise the audience. However, with an elaborate enhancement in genre-fusing-virtuosity of this nature, it plagued this writer to ask how Davey felt when navigating his lyrical approach for Silver Feeds The Black Sun… an artwork that is unquestionably, illustrious.

“Thank you. I mean, I appreciate your perspective. It is, if you think it's illustrious, wonderful, but for us, I mean… I'm so grateful that we were able to achieve this. I was coming from a place of fear, which I have never felt before in writing. I'd never been trepidatious about writing or being concerned about, you know, our ability to do something compelling internally.” He discloses with an honesty that is truly, magnetic; then carries on - “But after… I love Bodies so much, and coming this far in our career, I was concerned. I didn't know how we were going to do it. I knew if we sat down and we wrote something that sounded like Bodies, it would be boring. Now, I love Bodies. And we have never done that in the past, right? We had never gone to write Bodies and had it sound like Blood (The Blood Album or AFI [2017]), or write Blood, and had it sound like Burials, and so on and so forth, but backwards, or in reverse.

But this time I was just confronted with such a vast, towering past, musical past, that I wasn't sure what we had left, that we hadn't touched upon, (something) that was genuine, that wasn't forced. Because if you force it, it's gonna be junk.

But we had a conversation, and the conversation was fruitful.”‍

Lyrically though, in terms of “thematic” nature perhaps, did your past magnificent endeavours affect your poetry for Silver Feeds The Black Sun…?“

So to be clear, I'm not looking back and necessarily trying to say something different. Whenever I write, it's me writing honestly about my feelings at the time, I'm rarely at a loss of words.” He clarifies with an arduous passion – “What I was looking back at, is how I delivered those words. So, it's more about form than content. But their form, in delivery, in structure, form a different form, which allowed for a different writing process, and a different delivery process that was so fulfilling! It was so exciting, and so fresh and writing this… When Jade [Puget, guitarist] and I sat down and wrote it, we would just write and write, and we'd get song after song after song, over the course of the 10 months - so many songs, and it was all exhilarating! Because it was entirely part of us, yet fresh, and to be doing that at this stage, is so luxurious.”

‍‘Sphere Of Truth’ is an interesting one that possibly presents itself in almost a theatrical sense. As if Atticus Ross and Johnny Marr were asked to write a film and compose the soundtrack, but realistically, AFI were the conductor of the project, and Mr. Havok was the script writer and director. Does this composition have a cinematic element to it in terms of songwriting?

“I'm telling a story of the times, a reflection of the times in that song. I think, for me, it's a sonic zeitgeist, if you will, a ‘Sphere Of Truth’ of where we are. A perspective on what may be inevitable and what is to come, and the current, monstrous uncanny, like the noxious Chimera that culture is. That is what you hear on ‘Sphere Of Truth’

‍Life at times, does imitate art.

One of the greatest and most influential writers of all time Count Leo Tolstoy once said: “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

Drummer Adam Carson, bassist Hunter Burgan, guitarist Jade Puget, and the mystically enlightening frontman Mr. Davey Havok, have prestigiously transmitted their feelings in the virtue of punk as a truly enrapturing artwork known as: Silver Feeds The Black Sun…

Conceivably, Paul Cézanne would classify AFI as “a work of art”.

Interview by Will Oakeshott @teenwolfwill

‍AFI release Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… on October 3rd via Run For Cover Records/Civilians. Pre-order here.

AFI - Silver Bleeds the Black Sun... tracklisting

1. The Bird of Prey
2. Behind the Clock
3. Holy Visions
4. Blasphemy and Excess
5. Spear of Truth
6. Ash Speck in a Green Eye
7. VOIDWARD, I BEND BACK
8. Marguerite
9. A World Unmade
10. Nooneunderground