AFI

Even when they're upbeat they're still bummed out: NorCal fourpiece AFI continue their march at the front lines of the Goth-prog-punk brigade. With each of their last few releases, AFI have increasingly refined and expanded their sonic palette, and Decemberunderground is their most ambitious work to date. Stunningly diverse but meticulously cohesive, the album is a rousing, gloomy and suitably melodramatic soundtrack for after school trips to Hot Topic or late night breakups over IM.

Never let it be said that the youth of America can't recognize quality. These guys are spectacularly expert--with their dybbuk-or-angel vocal switchoffs, compulsive tempo shifts, dramatic dynamics, and multiple melodic and rhythmic elements, they're as exhausting to listen to as Stan Kenton, and with almost as much insight into the human heart. They predicate their worldview on their inability to win the love of Lara Croft, who led them on in a summer romance they now realize was an amoral farrago of lies and deception. So they consign her to many different hells, from ordinary suicide to my favorite: "Watch the stars turn you to nothing." And she thought she was so great. (Grade - C+)