When the pen hides from my hand
It leaves me free to keep digging
Underground there is a man
Ever glowing, calling me home
For more than three decades, AFI have lived in a state of constant evolution. Each record is a metamorphosis, a deliberate refusal of stasis, and a compulsion toward reinvention. Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…, due October 3rd via Run For Cover Records, continues this tradition while also bending back toward a spectral center the band has long carried within. Their new video, Holy Visions, directed by Gilbert Trejo, stands as the subsequent revelation of the band’s current post-punk and gothic rock phase, which embraces influences such as Killing Joke, The Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, and The Chameleons.
The track itself is built from the language of ritual and spiritual rapture. Hunter Burgan’s bassline throbs with a pulse that feels like The Cure colliding with The Comsat Angels, while Jade Puget’s soaring guitar line, with its towering melodic hook, stands among his finest work — and one of the most striking post-punk and gothic rock guitar passages you’re likely to hear this year, recalling The Chameleons in their Script of the Bridge era. Adam Carson’s drumming is both danceable and propulsive, a rhythm that drives with ceremonial force yet invites movement — the very beat that sets Havok dancing and swaying in Trejo’s fevered frames. At the center, Davey Havok sings with the ardent passion of Jaz Coleman in Night Time–era Killing Joke, summoning veneration and dread in equal measure.
As Trejo’s camera bathes this liturgy in a purple hue, the video lingers on jeweled glimpses of a small shrine, a sudden flash of a blade, and the sight of Havok dancing and swaying while AFI play with ritualistic intensity. Here, Havok is staged as both preacher and penitent, haloed in color, gestures spilling outward with the force of possession. The imagery recalls tent revivals and psychedelic Lizard King sermons; a strange communion that blurs the boundaries between exaltation and delirium.
“Getting to work with Gilbert on two videos was a joy,” Havok gushes. “Holy Visions is the perfect visual sublimation of the song.” The word “sublimation” feels exact: desire is transmuted, material is made vapour, belief is set ablaze.
The performance is presented with a hallucinatory pulse that could have been spliced from a 16mm reel unearthed in a basement theatre, one of those forgotten promo clips cut for B-movies in the late 60s. Colours bleed, outlines tremble, images are overlapped; the grain itself feels alive. Havok commands this frame with the practiced devotion of a cult figure, his moustache (equal parts Sam Elliott and Floyd Pepper) only sharpening the sense of apparition.
Watch the video for “Holy Visions” below:
Context matters. AFI’s transmutation into Gothic Rock isn’t new. Los Angeles dancefloors have long known AFI frontman Davey Havok as an acolyte of Bauhaus, Specimen, and their black-clad lineage. His presence there isn’t tourist enthusiasm but true immersion, the kind that reshapes how one moves and how one sings. Holy Visions distills this immersion into a hymn of faith and theatre, where personal ritual becomes public spectacle.
The result is a piece that belongs less to the age of streaming clips than to a lineage of visionary performance films: devotional, decadent, and drenched in luminous intensity. AFI have surprised themselves again, and in doing so, they’ve lit a shrine for the rest of us to enter.
AFI is readying for a fall U.S. tour featuring TR/ST, dates are as follows:
AFI Tour Dates:
- 09/14 Washington, PA @ Four Chord Music Festival 2025*
- 09/30 Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
- 10/02 Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore Detroit
- 10/03 Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed
- 10/04 Columbus, OH @ The Bluestone
- 10/06 Buffalo, NY @ Buffalo RiverWorks
- 10/07 Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues Cleveland
- 10/09 Washington, DC @ The Anthem
- 10/10 Boston, MA @ Citizens House of Blues
- 10/12 Wallingford, CT @ The Dome at Toyota Oakdale Theatre
- 10/14 Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia
- 10/15 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
- 10/17 Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
- 10/18 Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works
- 10/20 Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
- 10/21 North Myrtle Beach, SC @ House of Blues Myrtle Beach
- 10/23 Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live
- 10/24 Fort Lauderdale, FL @ War Memorial Auditorium
- 10/25 Tampa, FL @ The Ritz Ybor
- 10/28 Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom
- 10/29 Austin, TX @ ACL Live at Moody Theater
- 10/31 Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
- 11/01 Salt Lake City, UT @ Rockwell at the Complex
- 11/04 Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre
- 11/05 San Diego, CA @ SOMA
- 11/16 Mexico City, MX @ Corona Capital 2025*
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