10 Legendary Rock Bands That Made Metal Albums

From their first few records, you could never really fit AFI into a neat genre that often. While you originally had them making traditional hardcore punk, you could hear them inching towards the style of the Misfits on the All Hallows E.P. and even adopting the sounds of post punk on their later records like Bodies. All of these genres had a certain gothic slant to them though, and things got a lot more grizzled on Sing the Sorrow.

Being produced by Butch Vig, this feels much more like a metal album from the sheer size of the sound. When you listen back to the drums and the guitars on a song like Dancing Through Sunday, the production has a lot more in common with something like Black Sabbath than the Ramones, all while Davey Havok plays up the Goth look to a tee. Aside from the actual aesthetic, the construction of the songs jumped up a notch as well, bringing a more bombastic sound to Girl's Not Grey that was miles ahead of what people like Against Me! may have been doing in the punk world.

If anything, this marked a turning point where AFI could do whatever they wanted going forward. Compared to their punk counterparts that stayed in the same sound, Sing the Sorrow opened the door for going even more cold and calculated on Decemberunderground until eventually leaving the thrashy side of their sound behind altogether on their next few releases. They may have gotten some flak from the OG punk kids, but this was the moment where everything managed to click.