The Amity Affliction

Thu 1st Jul, 2010 in Features

The Amity Affliction has been kicking around for six years now, each member heavily involved in the Brisbane music scene. In June the group dropped a new album Youngbloods, which has proved to be the band’s most commercially successful work to date, debuting on the ARIA charts at number six.

Many keyboard warriors will jump at a chance to knock down anything Amity Affliction does. That said, they must be doing something right to bring their brand of post-hardcore to the minds of kids today. “Well we’ve worked hard. We’ve worked really fucking hard,” leadsinger Joel Birch tells FasterLouder.

“There was one year where we toured Australia for eight months. That’s ridiculous; there is not that much to tour. There isn’t eight months worth of touring in this country and we did it somehow. Literally, we just went round and round and round and round. That was the year before last, the year before we put out Severed Ties. Then we put out Severed Ties and took it a bit easier last year. We ended up in the UK and America within six months of each other, now I guess we’re back to doing the rounds and hopefully back to Europe at the end of the year.”

This time around, a considerable amount of cash was spent and the boys from Brisbane took themselves to New York to record with producer Machine (Lamb of God, Fall Out Boy).

Birch is completely frank about the recording experience. “It was stressful. Very stressful. There was a lot riding on it. It just wasn’t a holiday over there. I thought it was going to be a bit more of a fun trip than it turned out to be but it was still an awesome experience.”

The process proved to be the most strenuous for the band to date, “The last one we did, Severed Ties, I guess that was stressful for the other guys but for Ahren [Stringer] and I vocally, it wasn’t. We just did it at our leisure; we just recorded vocals when we felt like it. This one was a lot more structured obviously, we had a time frame that we had to stick to which we did thank God, otherwise we’d be fucked. It would have been a big waste of money.”

A heavily structured schedule, along with a large injection of money, was something completely new to Amity, however the decision to take themselves to the other side of the world to work with Machine was an easy choice. “There is really no one in Australia who is on par. Firstly, who produces overseas and secondly the Machine himself, there is no one here who compares. How many US bands come to Australia to record? That is the fact of the matter. They’ve got more people, they’ve got more bands, and they’ve got more history. So they’ve really got everything going for them in that regard but then again, they are so flooded with bands that there is a lot of shit there too.”

Despite the easy call to work with Machine, the there were many things weighing on the minds of the boys while recording. “It was also whether it was going to be good enough, were people gonna want to listen to it, are they gonna want to buy it, are they gonna give a shit? We haven’t put out a record in a year and half nearly and then we just did one really basic tour at the start of the year with our mates in Burning Empires and that’s it. We haven’t really done anything for six months now so it’s all a big mystery till this Friday I guess.”

Compared to their previous release, the band finds a lot more to be proud of in Youngbloods. “We’ve put out a way better record than Severed Ties. We certainly put a lot more effort into it, a lot more thought.”

“It’s more mature. I know that is really cliché but you put a band together for as long as we’ve been together, we’ve been touring for six or seven years now and it finally feels like we’re finding our place in our own music and not forcing stuff out. Severed Ties was pretty forced out. We’ll be the first to admit it; there are some songs on there that are pretty sub-par. We pretty much could have put out a long EP and it would have been better than putting out that album, which is unfortunate.”

On questioning Birch was more than happy to give up the identity of the lacking songs from Severed Ties. ‘We redid one off the first EP, and that Do You Party song sucks. There are a couple of others. Jesse Intense was really old by the time it got on there as well.”

If the cover of Love Is A Battlefield makes you cringe, Joel has this opinion on the matter, “It’s disgusting. I hate that fucking song, so filthy. No one will ever hear it live, never played it and never will. I was like the strongest opposition to that but I’m just the singer.”

Birch doesn’t have any problem admitting to his personal likes and dislikes when it comes to Youngbloods either. “As for the favourite, Fuck the Yankees. That song is about my mum, it’s actually a really nice song, it’s just got a really fucked title. The title has nothing to do with anything; it’s just an odd name.”

When pressed for his least favourite of the ten tracks, he surrendered the name RIP Foghorn. “There was this dead chicken on the side of the road which was there the whole time that we recorded. It had one yellow leg sticking out, like Foghorn Leghorn so we named the song RIP Foghorn. It’s not the content of the song I don’t like; I just don’t like the song that much. I still like it; it’s just my least favourite.”

The Youngbloods release date was pushed forward a week for one simple reason: to avoid confronting the Parkway Drive juggernaut. “We didn’t want to go up against Parkway. It was going to come out the same day and that kind of defeats the purpose of putting out a record,” Birch explains.

However Birch assures FasterLouder that Youngbloods holds its own and comes with all the shiny bells and whistles that the budget could allow. “There is a bit more of a positive vibe than I’ve ever written about I guess. More personal but more positive. Everyone put in 110% this time instead of just being in this fucking band that puts out whatever. Most bands fall into that trap, we fell into that trap and we’re just trying to break out of it and do something really good and inspiring instead of going through the motions and churning something out. Didn’t want to try and flog a dead horse out.”

Catch The Amity Affliction on tour throughout July