Interview with Davey and Hunter
See That Issue #3
Conducted by Brian Dorry

"Asking For It, Anthems For Insubordinates, A Fire Inside, All Four Imbeciles, Another Flatulent Individual, Anglo-Saxon Fascists Incorporated, Allways Financially Insecure, Absolute Fucking Idiots", anyway you put it, AFI has helped breathe new life into hardcore by doing it their way, East Bay style.

For a band with members all around the age of 21; AFI has already toured with the likes of L7, Snapcase, The Swingin Utters, The Offspring, and hardcore kings, Sick Of It All. On top of that, these boys are set to tour Japan with The Offspring. And Europe this May with Good Riddance, before coming back to tour the states and Canada once again. Davey Havok (vocals), Adam Carson (drums), and the artist still known as Mark (guitar); and new edition bass player, Hunter Burgan (also of The Force) make up AFI. With their latest release ("Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes"). AFI has truly come into their own as a band. Showing that they can produce some powerful hardcore anthems, even if they aren't from New York.

Davey: There's a huge difference between East Bay and NYC. I mean "NYHC" is, well I don't really have to explain it, it's amazing. As far as "EBHC", we basically made that up. Maybe it exists maybe it doesn't. People would ask us what kind of music we play and we didn't have any better answer than "EBHC". We play HC, just not in the vein of SOIA or the Cro-Mags. And at the same time it's not quite like L.A., like Flag, and it's not like D.C., hence the birth of East Bay HC.

Brian Dorry: How has Hunter filled the void left by Geoff?

DH: Well were obviously going to miss Geoff; but he wasn't having fun with the playing/touring anymore. He got burnt out on the whole thing. He's in Canada doing some stuff with art now, so it's cool. Hunter is a bass machine. He's been playing two sets a night on this tour, an incredible piece of machinery.

Hunter: I'm a bass machine as opposed to a bass player. See most bands opt for a bass player, but I'm a bass machine. So it's a little more efficient that way.

BD: How would you describe the sound of the new album as compared to your previous two?

DH: It's definitely alot darker. A bit harder and exactly what we wanted to do. We did everything ourselves, and without sounding arrogant it's a lot better.

H: Sounds pretty arrogant, Dave.

DH: Alright edit that so it sounds like a dick.

H: Too late, leave it in.

BD: Like Screw 32 and Heckle, you guys started out with Wingnut Records, and left as did they. Why is that?

DH: A lot of bands that start out on Wingnut leave. They're just not a sufficient label for what we would like to do. Which is, have our music available for people who want to hear it. A simple request.

BD: I got to catch a couple of your shows with SOIA and Snapcase last year and it seemed that you didn't get the warmest response in Boston, while the NY kids went off. Why do you think that is?

DH: They hate us. We've played there like 3 or 4 times and they just don't like us up there. It's weird because it's not like they throw things or spit on us. They stand there. They just don't care. I don't know why. I'm not about to start anything cause I'm kind of small, but Hunter's tough.

H: Yeah. I'll kill you. But seriously these kids should just stay at home or casually miss us if they don't want to see us.

BD: You guys always stay at Steve (Heckle) Cunningham's house when you come to NY. What kind of munchies did you guys take from his kitchen?

H: Raviolis, cheese steaks.

DH: Steve's mom gets us bagels, alot of stuff, cereal.

H: What about Matt? (The singer of The Force) He took this old Mickey Mouse doll at Steve's house, started fuckin' it, and broke the nose off, sick shit!

DH: Aww man, it was Matt doing this doll, well, enough said.

BD: You have taken The Force with you on this tour. Are there any Northern Cali bands you'd like to tour with, like Fury 66 or Working Stiffs?

DH: Fury 66 rocks, they're really cool, but I've never seen The Working Stiffs.

H: The Stiffs are pretty rad too, very Swingin Utters.

DH: I'd love to tour with the Swingin Utters again. Those guys are absolutely amazing. They're so cool, we had so much fun with them. But yeah, we would want to bring out Fury 66 and of course The Force again.

BD: I think I'm correct in saying that nobody in the band surfs. So how did you get hooked up with the being on the soundtrack for two Taylor Steel surf videos?

DH: OK, now, Good Times was the one that came out a while ago, right? Well, we didn't hook up with that. We found out about it. One day somebody comes up to us and goes, "yeah, I heard your song on a surf video." and we were like, "cool, what surf video?" We never knew about that but it was cool they used us. For the new one, The Show, we have a song on the soundtrack, which Theologian is putting out, and it's an unreleased original secret song called 3 1/2. It's going to be a great soundtrack, NOFX, Rancid, Good Riddance, really cool.

H: 3 1/2 is so secret, they only let me hear it once.

BD: Of course you're going to excited about going to Japan with The Offspring, are there any particular things you'd like to bring back or do while you're there?

H: My sister is in love with Japan and everything that Japan has, so I'm going to have to bring back so much stuff for her it's going to be insane.

DH: I heard they have these robot toys over there that bleed.

H: I make robots, real ones. Wait, toys that bleed?

DH: Yeah also in Osaka, I think they have the world's largest ferris wheel. It takes 20 minutes to go around. That would be fun. Wait a minute! It's you! You're the guy! It was you wasn't it!?

BD: What?

DH: It was you I saw on MTV wearing our sweatshirt! Yes!

H: This was the guy I was telling you about. He was on 12 Angry Viewers wearing an AFI sweatshirt. Good comments. Those videos were shit. You trashed everyone. You wore an Ensign shirt one day too, right? How was that?...Alright that's the end of me interviewing you, but that was awesome!

BD: Will you guys ever come back and play The Garage in Westwood NJ?

DH: We love to play the garage. We play there whenever we can, totally! It's so fun. What usually happens is we play here in NYC and then we'll have a day off, so we'll play there. I love it. The first time we played there was around the time our first album came out. During our last song, Steve and Chris from Heckle dragged me off stage, through the back yard, picked me up and threw me in the pool. Mark had to finish singing the song. My driver's license is still water logged from that incident.

BD: Debating on whether or not AFI is a hardcore band or a punk band is a moot point. These guys have more energy then most bands I've seen and have such an intense stage presence, that calling them one of the most exciting bands out there would be an understatement. If you have yet to see AFI live or hear their music, I highly recommend picking up all three of their albums. You won't be disappointed.