Sometimes, you become a fan of something, and are forced to wait YEARS for the next instalment. Euphoria season 3? Four years. Chinese Democracy? Fourteen years. Winds of Winter? Fifteen years and counting! And yet, AFI take the lead on all of those, as it’s been SIXTEEN YEARS since their last headline tour in the UK. Sure, they supported Deftones back in 2017, but such a support slot certainly wasn’t enough to satiate their rabid fanbase. Suffice to say, the anticipation in the room tonight is at an all-time high, with Manchester Academy full to the brim with longtime AFI fans desperate to see their heroes.

But first, it’s up to support act TR/ST to warm up the crowd with their brand of darkwave synth pop; a feat they don’t quite pull off. Perhaps on a different night, in a different venue, in a different support slot, they’d have gone down a storm. There’s clearly logic behind bringing them out on tour, as they exist in the same realm as ‘Blaqk Audio’ (Davey Havok & Jade Puget’s side project) but when the entire crowd is chomping at the bit for AFI, the Canadian two piece’s atmospheric broodings don’t quite have what it takes. It means that, unfortunately, the majority of their 30-minute set feels like a wait for AFI, that itself feels that much longer than 30-minutes.

Words: Kate Allvey  //  Photos: Emma Stone and Clemente Ruiz (Deftones)

Basement

‘Time Waster’s tumbleweeds of modern grunge herald the welcome return of Basement to the capital after their long hiatus. There’s an easy stampede to the front to see what they’re doing now they’ve evolved beyond emo, and the new status quo is melodic echoing snapshots that progress into booming slippery realness that encourages dramatic MTV-era pauses to let the emotion sink in.

Deafheaven

Let’s bring the Coachella vibes to one corner of our desert. Cosmically heavy, they bring a pit for those who need it and room to contemplate if you just want to let the waves of gorgeous shred wash over you. George Clarke’s growls keep Deafheaven grounded in their classic metal heritage and provide relief from the heat with a torrent of drums.

Mannequin Pussy 

Missy Dabice drops vocals like an anti-siren song, drawing us in with solidarity and curiosity, cavorting through ‘I Don’t Know You’s fields of riot grrrrl distortion. They’re the uncompromising, sophisticated siblings to Amyl And The Sniffers, with machete riffs to challenge and invigorate. ‘Control’ channels old school punk rebellion in magnificently tumultuous style; all babydoll eyes to distract you while they’re throwing a brick through your window.

Recluse

Recluse’s raw sound attracts more and more followers with every show they play. The way they drift through outrage and into soundscapes makes each brief set a punk journey, and if you aren’t pitting, you’re nodding along to their ferocious sentiment and rip-roaring screams.

Clarion

Are Clarion the perfect accompaniment to a Sunday afternoon in the park? Songbird vocals on ‘Cover Me’ veil a bold riffing edge that motors straight into ‘Blue Fairy’ with the kind of energy that Kim Deal would be proud of. Considered and vibrant, and even more dynamic under the huge arching X Stage which their sound fills along with the dust, Clarion are an exceptionally cool respite to the day’s heaviness.

Ecca Vandal

If you want taut, indefinable energy, look no further than Ecca Vandal. Jump like gravity’s flipping to screeching guitar then bounce to a sound that’s our favourite parts of everything during an uproar of a set that threatens to break out of the confines of the X stage and spark a street party to shake the looming tower blocks. Absorbing, infinitely danceable, and incredibly exciting.

AFI

The ex-goth-pinups-turned-post-punk-legends bring a mature show to the West field packed with hits to sandwich their latest tracks. Opening with ‘Girl’s Not Grey’ feels like a payoff of a lifetime of fandom for the crowd packed into the thin slice of shade, and ‘Love Like Winter’ sends the moustachioed Davey Havok into a one man dance-off. The path to their current incarnation is laid clear when ‘Holy Vision’ explodes into their set, but they’re more than capable of chucking in an anthem or two when ‘Beautiful Thieves’ comes out to play.

Amyl And The Sniffers

If there was ever a doubt that the Aussie punk sensations could pack a whole field, that’s been swept away with a flick of a bombshell-blonde curl. ‘Do It Do It’ brings the party; all you need is the right attitude and the right riffs and everything else just flows when you’re Amyl And The Sniffers. “You know it’s gonna be a good set when I’ve already lost one of my eyelashes,” laughs Amy Taylor, just before the big groove that evolves from ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’. Their pep, grit, and cartoonish ultra-human energy makes them a force to be reckoned with.

IDLES

‘Levitator’ makes for a gutsy opener from the mighty Idles. Their presence is huge and incendiary, and their posse is ready to go from drumbeats of ‘Never Fight A Man With A Perm’, roused by Joe Talbot’s everyman preaching. As the sun sets to frantic drum breakdowns, their infectious bravado and bass struts feel both abrupt and necessary. Horse impressions, anti-pop sax and a whole lot of rabble rousing make IDLES the main pull for more than a few festival-goers.

Deftones

This isn’t just a headlining set. Deftones have become so much more than a band; they’re a full body, total immersion experience now, with a show that slides deftly between hypnotic states. From behind the smoke, the opening to ‘Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)’ sparks an eruption as we surge into action. Deftones seem to float serenely against the bustle of the crowd, underscored with a gentle glow, as we’re led from ‘Around The Fur’ into ‘My Mind Is A Mountain’. Perhaps they were made for a space this massive, we think, as ‘Feiticeira’ echoes among the trees, vibrantly alien. Phones raise gently to capture the bass emptiness of ‘Mascara’, a sprinkling of flowers in the cooling night air. 

The music takes first place with the band as a mere medium for their vision. We get an “Alright! Let’s boogie!” from Chino Moreno half an hour into their set, but this isn’t the kind of show that needs a charismatic presence onstage. We’re here to lose ourselves for ninety minutes to a band who conjure whole worlds from memory and imagination if you let them. ‘Rocket Skates’ is bursting with blistering contradictions, and like the other newer songs, slots into their set effortlessly, but when they drop a headbanger like ‘Change (In The House Of Flies)’ or ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’, we are momentarily reminded that they are still one heck of a rock band when they chose to come back down to Earth. Whatever plane of existence they’re inhabiting, tonight could be their finest festival set in the UK to date.

Click the image below to see more pictures from Outbreak at All Points East

We didn’t get much warning of AFI’s new direction, but our advance notice was beautiful in its scope. ‘Behind the Clock’ rises like a city of steel and concrete, dominated by echoing guitar that guides us through alleyways of tense drumbeats. Previously, we needed the emo end of Davey Havok’s vocals to drive the drama, but now his theatrical echoes bleed into Jade Puget’s heroic riffs like they’re flying in formation. To skip from this to ‘Holy Visions’, a track that broods and stalks then skips into raindrop guitar and idolatrous rapture in the vocals, is a stunning move. This is the kind of purity in thought and tone that betrays the drive behind AFI all along. How we missed their Bauhaus childhoods under their hardcore screaming for so long is a mystery. 

The quiet that fills the spaces between each idea is something we also never knew we needed from AFI’s sound. “Here’s blasphemy, here’s to excess,” spits Havok, the line more bold amid the philosophical ripples of ‘Blasphemy & Excess’, backed by acoustic guitar that wraps itself around this records like thorns. Introduced in silken opener ‘Bird Of Prey’, another track unmuted by it’s subtlety, we’re struck by their ability to conjure their past to shed light on the world unfolding in front of us. Religion and contemplation provide the backdrop for their post-punk maturity: ‘Spear Of Truth’ deserves a video in blurred black and white, with waving sheets across a church to match the lightness of the guitar in comparison to the monumental intonation from Havok. Even the most stereotypically eighties songs like ‘Ash Speck In A Green Eye’ or ‘Voidward, I Bend Back’ burn like altar candles in a blackened night, dealing in the metaphysical with as much delight as they apply gilt to the band’s inspirations. 

This might not be the AFI album that we asked for, but it’s the one that we deserve. It’s too cliche for a band pushing fifty to make yet another straight punk album, and it’s not like they kept their love of synth and new-wave a secret over the years. Here, at the end of 2025, AFI have revealed themselves as the goths they were all along, masterfully processing their experiences and loves into mature, honest post-punk. They’ve shed some of their po-faced seriousness which prevailed in their earlier years, and while ‘Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…’ is frequently a playful album, there’s never a loss of their earnest desire to make a statement. They’re wise enough to have created an album reflecting exactly where they are in their lives and careers: smart, bold, nostalgic, dark and a constant surprise. 

KATE ALLVEY

From the humble beginnings of scrappy two-minute, four-chord punk of the early ’90s where they’d play in the backyards and dive clubs of the Bay Area, they’ve consistently reimagined themselves with each record. Whether it was the raging melodic hardcore punk of ‘The Art of Drowning’, taking on the emo crown on ‘Sing the Sorrow’, donning the mascara for ‘Decemberunderground’ or dabbling in new wave on 2017’s self-titled release, with each record comes a different approach.

Following the teaser EP, ‘The Missing Man’, in 2018, AFI return with their 11th studio album ‘Bodies’, and a whole new batch of motifs. Only a few seconds into ‘Dulceria’ – a grooving, hip-shaking number which seems to give a subtle, knowing nod to ‘The Nephilim’ of years gone by with its walking bassline – and you see this is another in a long line of directions Davey Havok and co. want to pull us in.

There are more dips into electronics and synthesizers with ‘Escape from Los Angeles’ which harkens back to 1980s new wave luminaries like Depeche Mode. A track of this ilk is where AFI and Blaqk Audio (the synth side-project of Havok and guitarist Jade Puget) effortlessly intertwines.

Among the evolution, there is still room for some stone cold classic AFI; ‘Begging For Trouble’ is that instant hit that they can effortlessly summon from their songwriting oeuvre, a solid sub-three minute punk/emo yearning track pumped full of delicious licks, timeless lyrics, and even a string section.

One of the more experimental tracks on the record comes in the form of ‘Back From The Flesh’, an epic gothic anthem. While grandiose in its theme, there is a something of a relief when it’s followed up by the almost indie-tinged ‘Looking Tragic’, in which Havok provides a commentary on the fear culture of today’s world, “Everyone’s looking tragic / looking for the new panic / looking for the new panic in anyone”.

As ‘Bodies’ is marked as being the next phase in the band’s career, there is a sense of needing to pay homage to what’s gone before. Whether intentional or not, the frenzied breakdown of ‘On Your Back’ is reminiscent of the band’s pre-millennium life. There are also more Blaqk Audio influences on show in ‘Death Of The Party’, a track which wouldn’t seem out of place on a Cold Cave setlist.

In Puget’s own words closing track ‘Tied To A Tree’ is an “exemplification of the evolution of the band”, and it does demonstrate this belief. It’s a brooding track which morphs into something more monumental, a haunting acoustic guitar riff balloons into an explosion of sound and takes AFI’s to somewhere they’ve never tread sonically before.

At one point in their career, AFI’s evolution would be one that received backlash from fervent, hardcore fans with a desperate desire for their beloved band to resist changing anything about their sound. The AFI of today is a beast which intrigues and ‘Bodies’ provides another illustration of how a band’s evolution is meant to be done.

TOM WALSH

Lead singer Davey Havok’s lyrics were once again captivating and deviated away from the anger, bitterness and sorrow that was such a feature of 2013’s ‘Burials’. Jade Puget’s guitar work was far more expressive and even swayed into new-wave at time. It was like an AFI rediscovering their mojo and one of heavyweights of the emo era was back to regain its crown.

The opening seconds of the band’s latest EP ‘The Missing Man’, begin to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and dare you to tentatively pose the question of whether they are going back to a style akin to their early days of hardcore punk. Adam Carson’s frantic opening drumbeat for ‘Trash Bat’ will certainly excite those fans who thought this side of AFI died from the moment they started donning powder blue eye shade.

Scale the production values back a little bit and this could have easily nestled into the tracklisting of ‘Black Sails in the Sunset’, as could lead single ‘Get Dark’. Havok’s broodings vocals of “I am not the father/I am not the son/Only a maker of useless things I’ve done” over Puget’s jangling harmonics give way for a thrashing and chaotic chorus.

However, this is not the AFI of 1999 and ‘The Missing Man’ showcases the broad range of musical styles the band possesses. The title track is a haunting song with Puget’s lilting notes backed by a string section as Havok’s breathless words float over the top. The 1980s synth style of ‘Break Angels’ feels very much in-keeping with the AFI we have come to know in recent years.

The only disappointment comes in the form of the ballad-esque ‘Back Into the Sun’ which feels a complete misstep. As it warbles and staggers through the run time, threatening to drain the momentum out of the EP, there is a growing sense of why it simply couldn’t just be left on the studio floor.

This is slightly symptomatic on previous records, of where one song may have been too much, but this can be forgiven – ‘The Missing Man’ provides an indication that AFI are returning to capture our hearts once again.

TOM WALSH

Due for release on the 6th February 2018 and following up Havok’s first novel, 2013’s ‘Pop Kids’, the story follows Alvin, a party photographer. His controversial, taste-making site has brought fortune and fame to hundreds, including the wild girls of the hit reality series “All F’s.” With a fiery, freshly broken heart, Al attempts to enact his vendetta against a former online teen heartthrob while struggling to gain the affection of disaffected socialite, Sky Monroe. In this millennial love story filled with fast cars, pop stars, outrageous poseurs, lavish parties, golden guns, designer drugs and drag queens, dark Hollywood looms behind a blinding spotlight, directing all. Here celebrity is God, irreverence is revered, and obsession takes the wheel to run every red light in this pop-fueled noir. You can pre-order it here and view a trailer for the book below.

Earlier this year, Havok’s band AFI released their tenth album, ‘AFI (The Blood Album)’, via Concord Bicycle Music.