AFI at Terminal 5
photo by Dana Distortion

AFI, Nothing & Souvenirs played Terminal 5 (pics/setlist ++ review from Boston)

AFI are currently supporting AFI (The Blood Album) on tour with openers Souvenirs, and they began a leg with direct support from Nothing at NYC’s Terminal 5 on Friday (2/3). Pictures of the Terminal 5 show are in this post. I caught the tour the next night (2/4) at the Paradise in Boston.

They opened with “This Celluloid Dream,” a deep cut off the now-classic Sing the Sorrow, and instantly turned the sold-out crowd into a sea of constantly-moving people. Fists were raised, every lyric was shouted verbatim. It was clear right off the bat that there’s still something really special about that album. Anytime they played something off of it (and they played six songs, including the hidden track), they had the crowd in the palms of their hands — even for something like the intimate clean-guitar-and-vocals ballad “The Leaving Song.” We got that same rush during their highly-spirited performance of 2000’s breakthrough single “The Days of the Phoenix,” the one song in their main set from the Nitro Records days. (Setlist.fm points out that AFI returned for a second encore and took a fan request for “Morningstar,” though I had already ducked out by then. My loss.) I’m pretty lukewarm towards the Crash Love and Burials stuff that filled a good chunk of the set, but AFI looked and sounded like such pros that even those songs were hard to deny.

Nothing sounded as good and as loud as ever with a set of their punky shoegaze, which is a better match for an AFI tour than you might think. They also brought their usual brand of deadpan humor:

Nicky: “We played New York last night… New York fucking sucks. This is way better.”
Crowd: *huge cheers*

Nicky: “…I didn’t say Boston is good. It’s just better than New York.”

Crowd: *less cheers*

Before Nothing it was Souvenirs, who played mostly off their new album Posture of Apology (the followup to their debut, You, Fear and Me). They play a kind of post-Deja Entendu emo that’s relatively straightforward, but made for a fun opening set.

Pictures of all three bands at Terminal 5 are in the gallery above. Setlists from the Boston and NYC shows below.

AFI @ Terminal 5 – 2/3/17 Setlist (via)
Miss Murder
The Leaving Song Pt. II
Aurelia
Girl’s Not Grey
The Conductor
Triple Zero
17 Crimes
Dumb Kids
Clove Smoke Catharsis
End Transmission
Morningstar
The Days of the Phoenix
Snow Cats
I Hope You Suffer
Silver and Cold

Encore:
The Face Beneath the Waves
This Celluloid Dream

AFI @ Paradise Rock Club – 2/4/17 Setlist (via)
This Celluloid Dream
17 Crimes
Aurelia
Veronica Sawyer Smokes
Girl’s Not Grey
The Conductor
The Leaving Song Pt. II
Now the World
Dumb Kids
End Transmission
This Time Imperfect
The Days of the Phoenix
I Hope You Suffer
Snow Cats
Miss Murder

Encore:
The Leaving Song
Silver and Cold

Encore 2:
Morningstar (fan request)

photos by Dana Distortion