Davey Havok is my age, and he grew up listening to the same sort of stuff I did. It's really no secret, despite the surprise of several million american teenagers - the B-side to Miss Murder was a cover of the Morrissey B-side "Jack the Ripper" (although you can tell they've only heard the live version) and there's the presence of folks like Ronan Harris on AFI's Decemberunderground. So all in all, it's none-too-surprising that CexCells sounds an awful lot like it was written by people who really wanted to toast their favorite 80's and 90's bands.

That's probably the best thing about the album, and also its major weakness.
It's a competantly put-together electronic album. It's better-produced and better-written than about 90% of the "underground" electronic music out there - it actually features chord changes and vocal melodies that exceed three notes, and not every synth sound used is a fuzzy arpeggiated supersaw lead. Honestly, though, that's not really leaping a high bar. And while there are some standout tracks (the amusingly-named-for-Joy-Division-Fans "Stiff Kittens", the Tears-for-Fears-ish anthem "Cities of Night", and the industro-poppy "Bitter for Sweet") for the most part it's a lot of genre-worshipping and "which of our favorite bands can we make this track sound like." Admittedly they do it well - there are some tracks that approach the arena-electro of depeche Mode at their debauched heights - "The Fear of Being Found" is a close cousin of a Martin Gore ballad, and the aforementioned Kittens wouldn't sound out of place on "Music for the Masses." Therein lies the problem, though - those heights were 20 years ago and are still available in any number of formats, and since Davey and co. are one of the most skilled hook-writing outfits of the past decade, it seems sort of baffling that they're spending so much effort trying to minimise their own contributions to the style of their own songs. AFI themselves have recently written some catchy blends of power-pop and electronic rock with "37mm", "Prelude" and "Love Like Winter" - tight, punchy arrangements with a lot of energy and enormous singalong hooks, stadium-rock you can still dance to. "CexCells" tends to trade that in a lot of that punkish energy for more electro-dance cliche. Some of the best-produced and best-written examples of electro cliche, certainly, and they've still got some impressively memorable hooks, but honestly I expected more.

In the end I have mixed feelings about it. Had these not been guys from AFI, I'd probably rave about this album as the best thing to hit "futurepop" and associated genres in 15 years. There are a few moments of pure brilliance on this album - the choruses of "Cities of Night" and "Bitter for Sweet" approaches the kinds of hook-laden heights I hoped for, despite their more sprawling nature. The pre-album hype, though, at least in the electro circles I travel in, cast this album as the coming savior of electro, the album that would legitimise synthpop and futurepop as a big-label commercial genre. There's not quite enough here to lead the legions of AFI fans to this, though, other than the fact that it contains Davey and Jade - it's not likely to inspire mopey 15-year-olds to trade in their 30 Seconds To Mars albums for Joy Division b-sides (and if the early reviews by fans are any indication, pretty much anyone under the age of 30 has no idea that anyone else ever made music remotely like this). It will I'm sure be hailed as a great electronic album, and also a loving and detailed tribute to the bands that they take as influences, but it has a way to go before it revolutionizes anything.

On the plus side, it is nice to know that bigger-name musicians listen to the music made by many of my friends and take a lot of it to heart.

I guess the upshot is that everyone should buy the album, but not expect it to change the landscape of pop music.