AFI

A hardcore band at heart, AFI can write mosh pit anthems like "A Single Second" without batting a mascara-caked eyelash. Maybe that's why they've taken so many creative left-turns post-"Days of the Phoenix," a chaotic but catchy single that marked the band's first brush with the mainstream. In the years since, AFI's explored everything from industrial-strength synths ("Miss Murder") and speaker-rattling samples ("Prelude 12/21") to ravenous, arena-ready riffs ("Medicate"), making it abundantly clear that punk is simply the starting point of their ever-expanding sound.

Further evidence can be found in our Next Steps, which skims more than a decade of restless songs that'll make you scratch your head one second and bang it the next.

Even the earliest AFI material (the playful pop-punk of "Cereal Wars," the chase-scene chords of "3 1/2," the hardcore howls of "Today's Lesson") suggests there's more to these guys than gang choruses and gobs of makeup. For one thing, they know how to write serious hooks, whether they're as inescapable as the call-and-response parts of "The Missing Frame," as delirious as the sing/scream dynamics of "Kill Caustic," or as subtle as the tenderized acoustics of "The Leaving Song." No wonder the Offspring — AFI's former label bosses — covered "Totalimmortal" on the Me, Myself & Irene soundtrack.

Speaking of covers, we dug a couple up in our Deep Cuts, along with some time-tested fan favorites.

One of the easiest ways to understand AFI's roots is to plow through their EPs, especially their cover-song choices on All Hallow's and A Fire Inside: the Misfits ("Halloween") and the Cure ("The Hanging Garden"). Listen to them side-by-side and it's easy to recognize how AFI got their reputation as "goth-punk" icons, guys who could headline a basement show one night and star in a Tim Burton film the next. Thankfully, they've stuck with music, balancing their love of Baudelaire and black clothing with absolute jams, including the explosive bridges of "Endlessly, She Said" and the dimly lit melodrama of "End Transmission."

Career suicide. That's what could have happened when AFI's founding members decided to drop out of college and pursue punk rock full-time. Instead, they spent most of the '90s building a cult following on the back of such classic adrenaline-shot albums as Black Sails in the Sunset and The Art of Drowning. Then something strange happened around the release of 2003's Sing the Sorrow: AFI went platinum without losing their edge. If anything, their songs only got sharper, as guitarist Jade Puget became the band's primary songwriter and boosted their hardcore punk background with ambient noise and textures that are icier than their image. In other words, mood music you can mosh to. And no one does it better than the most important makeup-toting punks since the Misfits.