The Amity Affliction on moving forward

Disputes, differences, and an almost disbanding could have seen the end of The Amity Affliction.

This time last year the band announced that they had officially parted ways with founding member Ahren Stringer, but behind closed doors it was almost the lead vocalist, Joel Birch who walked. So how does a band move forward following internal turbulence? 

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For Birch, he is still working that out.

“I mean I’m not really past it,” he explains. “It’s still kind of going on. The band is moving forward but my life maybe not so much, you know, which is what it is. I have been doing my best to get through it and that’s all I can really do.”

So what made Birch stick with the ARIA nominated, heavily celebrated post-hardcore band that he has fronted since 2003? Commitment? The love of making music? It’s a complicated question with an even more complicated answer.

“We’re a band at the end of the day; it’s not just me. We talked about it and we love what we are doing and we want to keep doing it. We’ve been doing this a long time and there is history and we’ve built something. It’s a process but when you throw your eggs all in the one basket, I don’t know what else you’re meant to do,” he says candidly.

Just as music had brought them together before, the band move forward the only way they know how – a new album, a new member in bassist and clean vocalist, Jonny Reeves, and a shitload of shows. So far the experience has been laced in positivity, a welcome change from Birch’s usual feelings towards recording.

 

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“The dynamic was really good. It was really positive which was nice! I’ve said this all over the place – I hate recording. I hate the pressure of it. I’ve hated making every record made, maybe excluding Severed Ties and [Let The Ocean] Take Me, but they were very different experiences. We were really young and it was like rolling into the studio and treating it like a party. Maybe in those earlier days I didn’t have the pressure I put on myself. It has always been really stressful but this was a nice change. There was a lot of the three of us in there laying on the floor chatting while the songs were coming together so it was very positive and productive. It was pretty fucking easy to be honest!”

The output of those sessions is House of Cards, album number nine in a discography flooded with acclaim. The entry point was single ‘All That I Remember’, followed by the titular number, a track that unpacks Birch’s shared-trauma with his siblings related to their late-mother. It’s heartache doused in searing riffs, and brutal composition; The Amity Affliction signature cocktail.

“I’m proud of this record. We were lost in the wilderness there for a little bit with Misery (2018) and Everyone Loves You…Once You Leave Them (2020) but we’re kind of working our way back to where we’re at now and how we sounded in the beginning. It feels good.”

With the album due for release on Friday 24 April, it comes in time for the band to head back on the road and then out to sea. Honouring their regional audiences through filling their live show gap left from the cancellation of Park Waves, the band are embarked on a mammoth 21 date tour across Queensland, NSW, Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia, with support from In Hearts Wake and Redhook. 

 

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“We had a hole in our schedule we needed to fill because of the cancellation of Park Waves, and we thought it was only appropriate to try and at least make it to some of the places we were meant to go. It felt like brainer. To be honest, we hadn’t done a regional tour in a little while; it’s something we have always done since I joined the band and we will continue to try to get to all sorts of parts of Australia. We don’t want people to have to sleep in a hotel just to see us, we want to make it comfortable so that you see the show and go home to your nice bed,” Birch says whilst joking about the sag in his current hotel bed.

The band have also been announced as joining the 2027 Hellbound II cruise festival, joining mates and fellow heavy community members Parkway Drive, Alpha Wolf, I Killed The Prom Queen, and Thy Art Is Murder. 

Whether it’s on the sea or on your local stage, there are plenty of chances to see The Amity Affliction playing their new House of Cards material. Considering the alternative of what could have been, it’s prime time to make the most of the band sticking around.

Pre-save House of Cards from The Amity Affliction here.