On their seventh full-length effort, Brisbane natives The Amity Affliction revel in the struggle to uncover the people we need to become.
Australian post-hardcore favorites The Amity Affliction are internationally recognized for their fierce lyricism and hard-hitting music. Their time in the spotlight has a devoted following of fans who wear their hearts on their sleeves with clenched fists and weary eyes. For them, the music The Amity Affliction creates is about more than trudging through the experience of existence. Fans know the group is writing to inspire rebellion, both from the world as we know it and from the people they were in the past, in hopes we all seek to reborn as better, more empathetic human beings.
The Amity Affliction reaches new heights on Everyone Loves You…Once You Leave Them. Matt Squire’s production gives the material a larger-than-life feel that envelopes listeners in a journey through heartache and personal development that strays far from predictable genre tropes. “All My Friends Are Dead” and “Soak Me in Bleach,” which lead the record and were the first to be shared from the album, celebrate the struggle toward progress instead of lamenting the hardships of life. They peel back the facade of artistry being some higher calling and reveal the emotional and spiritual battles being fought by the group’s members daily.
The album reaches surprising depths with “Catatonia” and “Forever.” The first addresses a friends’ suicide head-on, while the latter takes a very blunt approach to address vocalist Joel Birch’s bi-polar diagnosis. These topics are becoming more common in culture today, with a growing audience of people in various stages of suffering pleading for open dialogues. Still, The Amity Affliction is one of the few rock bands in recent memory to take a direct approach to the issues. They don’t view mental health as a problem for others to solve, but rather as something we are all responsible for understanding
Everyone Loves You…Once You Leave Them sets a high bar for all rock releases coming out in 2020. It’s no longer enough to write good riffs and easily repeatable lyrics that tell people to be resilient, persistent, or whatever cliche version of masculinity you’ve come to expect from modern hard rock bands. Music has the power to influence change, both globally and on a profoundly personal level. It’s an art form that has long needed a healthy dose of sincerity, at least as far as rock is concerned, and The Amity Affliction has delivered that in abundance with their latest LP. They have given us a soundtrack to working through the pain rather than ignoring it and to overcoming our demons rather than pretending they don’t exist. They are doing the work that is needed to lead better lives, and we are fortunate to be granted a front-row seat to their evolution.
