Well, here we are again. Me, spending 469 characters trying to convince you this review wasn’t written by ChatGPT. You, thinking about where you were 25 years ago when this album first dropped in 1999. But let’s both spare one another the melancholia and jump right into this Craft repressing. As always, this is a review of the physical vinyl itself and not a review of its music, which includes three new bonus tracks “Lower It,” “Who Knew,” and “Weight Of Words.”
I was shipped the neon orange variant pictured top left, and they weren’t lying, this sucker is bright. Which is a similar color of my early All Hallows EP pressing. I’m sensing a collection trend…
Anyway, my review record is decently pressed with little-to no added distortion or warble – though I did need my record weight so my needle wouldn’t skip due to its shallow grooves. While I give credit to Craft and AFI for adding bonus tracks to this re-release, increasing the reason for collection… “God Called In Sick Today” really is the epitome of a perfect album-ender (yes, yes I know technically we’ve always had “Midnight Sun” as the hidden track… but there was a solid seven minutes of dead air to give us a moment to catch our whoa’ing breath). As Craft has done many times before, It would have been fun to have a standalone 45 of bonus tracks instead of cramming onto one 33 ⅓. I’ve had various friends all receive their variants and I gotta say the Tropical Sunset (pictured top right) turned out the best. Unlucky for you, it’s already sold out.
Find a bright orange copy for yourself at https://found.ee/afi-blacksails
