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Hear AFI’s Chaotic Goth-Opera ‘A Deep Slow Panic’

AFI 'A Deep Slow Panic' Stream

“We haven’t really felt this creative and excited to write and make songs again in a long time,” says AFI guitarist Jade Puget, recalling the creative process behind the post-hardcore lifers’ upcoming ninth album. “In many years.” Indeed, it’s been a full four years since AFI delivered their most recent LP, 2009’s stripped-back Crash Love, and on October 22, the theatrics will return with Burials, a dynamic 13-track LP that’s been two years in the making. 

Puget and AFI frontman/lyricist Davey Havok began writing material for the forthcoming full-length in the fall of 2011, but didn’t hit the studio until the spring of 2013, operating under the guidance of producer Gil Norton. Since then, the California-born quartet have shared two singles from Burials“I Hope You Suffer” and “17 Crimes.” Now, AFI are digging up a third tune, the operatic “A Deep Slow Panic.” According to Puget, the newly unveiled track was one of the first composed for the record.

“It kind of set the whole tone emotionally as far as lyrics and the kind of moodiness,” Puget says. “When we wrote that song, Davey was sort of in a very fragile state. My memory of that [song] is him being very emotional and his life being very chaotic. For Davey, I’m sure the lyrics were some of his rawest ones because it was so early on in the record. For me, I really loved that openness and that dark angular riffing in the verse.” 

Puget won’t go into detail about what exactly Havok was going through at the time and won’t discuss the meaning behind “A Deep Slow Panic,” but he does shed some light on Burials. “The whole record and that song included is about feelings of chaos, suffocation, powerlessness, desperation, and detachment in his life that he was having at that time,” he explains. “I think if you read the lyrics you can see where he was at mentally.” 

Dive deeper into Burials by streaming “A Deep Slow Panic” below, and be sure to pre-order the LP through iTunes.

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