Evolving from a rock outfit called The Black Republicans, Afghan Whigs is an alternative rock band that formed in Cincinnati in 1986. With an aggressive style of guitar-driven rock, the group quickly started to garner attention from notable music critics with its 1988 debut album Big Top Halloween, and signed with the seminal Seattle-based grunge label Sub Pop. As Afghan Whigs continued to tour and release studio material including 1990's Up in It and 1996's Black Love, with its signature dark humor themes, the group's members started to fall out with one another and eventually broke up in 2001. In 2011, the group announced it would play a number of reunion shows during the summer of 2012 at All Tomorrow's Parties' I'll Be Your Mirror event in London in addition to a number of festivals including Barcelona's Primavera Sound, Chicago's Lollapalooza and Pukkelpop in Hasselt, Belgium.
