"When you're playing a style of music that doesn't really fit anywhere, you run a risk. You're challenging people to leave their niche, to leave their predetermined ideas of what they're supposed to like. Luckily, we have a lot of people who just focus on the music and appreciate us for what we are. So we get fans from all different genres of music, the jocks, the spooky kids, skaters, college kids, punk rockers, hardcore kids, metal kids, all that" - Davey Havok-

Over 10 years on and counting, the same inner flame that fueled four teenagers making a primal noise in a Ukiah, Calif., garage has propelled AFI to unforeseen musical and professional levels.

AFI first surfaced in 1992, on Dork, a split 7" with fellow Ukiah High School students Loose Change (featuring future AFI guitarist Jade), it wouldn't be until the band's third full-length, 1997's Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes, that bassist Hunter (ex-The Force) would enlist. And it would be later still that the present AFI lineup would coalesce, with the addition of Jade (by then ex-Redemption 87) on the defining and now-classic fourth album, Black Sails In The Sunset, and the subsequent All Hallow's EP. The latter would give AFI its first taste of exposure beyond its long-cultivated cult following when the Offspring's cover of the EP's "Totalimmortal" appeared on the Me, Myself & Irene soundtrack and, in turn, on Modern Rock playlists nationwide. A year later, "Days Of The Phoenix," from The Art Of Drowning, would do the same, albeit with the band playing its own composition this time.