There comes a time when most every old punk decides to grow up, at least to some degree. Though AJ Dávila, the heavy-drinking, all-night-partying, cigarette-huffing former member of Puerto Rican garage-rock sensation Davila 666, hasn’t settled into a cubicle or swapped any of his favorite beers for cans of V8 and protein shakes, he is, as he tells it, looking forward to the future and working on his music in ways he hadn’t before.
“I named it The Future for a few reasons,” says Dávila of his upcoming third LP, El Futuro, speaking by phone from Mexico City where he’s lived for over two years now. “I write about my experience. Most of our experiences are heartbroken shit or fucked-up shit, you know, so I said to myself, ‘You always have to look toward the future.'”
Dávila’s new outlook on life and music beyond the “heartbroken” and “fucked up shit” didn’t arrive easily. He was in the middle of touring the United States when he received a phone call from his mother. His grandfather, who Dávila was very close to, had passed away. Dávila’s mother, however, urged him to not end his tour to attend the funeral.
“My mother told me, ‘Don’t come to the funeral,” he recalls. “‘He wouldn’t want you to be here … to see him in a coffin. So don’t come, just go to the tours.'”
Afroxander (aka Iván Fernández) 