The Amity Affliction: "With this record, we've nailed it"

It's been seventeen years since The Amity Affliction burst onto the scene, and seven albums later they've explored change and been through the wringer w...

It's been seventeen years since The Amity Affliction burst onto the scene, and seven albums later they've explored change and been through the wringer with it. Never ones to give up, they're back for more with 'Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them', and they're not going down without a fight.

Hi Ahren, how are things going since the release of the album?
Oh, everything's been received very well. I think it just hit ten million streams on Spotify. 'Soak Me In Bleach', we're playing that every night, and it's probably the biggest song so yeah we couldn't be happier, honestly, very very stoked.

Do you still get that same excitement after so long?
Oh yeah, definitely, it's always fun for us. Writing and recording music is my favourite part of being in a band. Creating something from nothing and watching people enjoy it is always a very rewarding part of the whole thing. Especially because our last album didn't do too well in Europe and the UK - it did really well in America, so we were kind of like, 'Alright, let's try and do the best parts of 'Misery', and add some heavier stuff that we've never really done before'. And, you know, Bob's your uncle; it's a good mix of heavier songs, and everyone seems to like it.

How do you go about processing some people not engaging with an album?
Well, it's very odd. Australia is very loyal, they pretty much love whatever we do. We've been trying to really smash the States, constantly for the last ten years. 'Misery' went down so well but I think we lost a bit of traction in Europe, because, you know, the Europeans, by the numbers, really liked the heavier stuff more so we thought okay let's try and keep everyone happy - us included. It's always more fun to play heavy stuff live, so we just incorporated that and listened to the fans.

How does that balance with the integrity of doing what you as a band want to do?
You just have to keep as many people happy as you can while not throwing away your integrity. By listening to people, and writing the songs that you want to listen to, I think we've got a nice balance on this record. As a band, you have to always listen to the fans because they're the ones listening to the music. You can write whatever you want to listen to, but at the end of the day, you want other people to like it too, so it's a real tight rope balancing act. I think with this record, we've nailed it. By the looks of things, anyway.

"The same people who are begging for change are the ones that shit on you when you do change"

Having those expectations from fans, and yourselves, does that ever feel suffocating?
Not at all, but it is a challenge, and we welcome it. It makes it more difficult. Kind of like gilding the lily, we really want to make the perfect album each time. We keep it in the back of our mind, but we don't ever really go 'Alright, we need to do this, and this, in this formulaic way to please everyone'. We just kind of go, 'We've got three heavy songs written, but let's focus on a softer song just to try and keep the album as diverse as possible'. At the end of the day if you just write the same song, and they're all fucking heavy bangers, that'll get old to people regardless of what they think. If you mix it up with some different stuff here and there, it just keeps the listener interested on the journey throughout the album, and that's what we always try to do - just make a not boring album. Does that make sense?

Sure. Has the dynamic of the band writing changed as this mindset develops?
We all have different jobs. Back in the day I used to write everything, but now Dan [Brown, guitar] has written most of the music on the last three albums, so I just wait for him to write songs, and he'll send them to me in the Dropbox, then Joel [Birch, vocals] will write the songs lyrically. So I have all these songs or poems from Joel, and I get the job of being the composer; putting all of the lyrics to the empty songs, and then put the melody to it. For example, the first song we finished was 'Soak Me In Bleach' where I just took my favourite song that Dan had written musically and my favourite lyrics and went 'Fuck yeah, this is a banger!' and it just went from there.

When you're writing, what are you trying to achieve?
For me, it's trying to write the fucking best songs that I would want to listen to. I've always pictured just fucking you know, a ball-tearing song that people can just get down to. I'll just keep waiting until that happens. The lyrics themselves they're Joel's outlet, and he writes what he knows about, and I think that's one of our unofficial gimmicks, that he's always writing about depression and how he feels and that really resonates with fans. But to me I just envision a kick-ass song and when it comes out exactly as I imagined it's an awesome feeling and that's what drives me. I just want to keep writing better and better music, and what I want to want to hear.

Given the nature of the lyrics, is that something you apply to yourself when singing?
I never think about it like that, I just think of it as cool words. I don't ever go any deeper than that. I mean, I know Joel, better than he knows himself. We've been in a band together for fucking fifteen years or more, so it's not lost meaning, but I know how he feels, and I've always been singing his words, so it's kind of just second nature to me now. I don't feel connected as such to the lyrics. His lyrics are beautiful, but I don't really think much deeper than that into it. As a kid, I never really cared about lyrics, and still, it's the least important thing to me when I'm listening to a song.

So music for you is more about feeling?
Yeah, basically. I just want to write songs for kids to trash their rooms to. The songs that I grew up listening to, when I was first discovering punk rock and stuff like that, gave me this feeling of 'fuck the world - punk rock is everything!' kind of vibes. That was my real outlet as a teenager - just turning up fucking heavy metal and punk rock in my room.

Given you're piecing the songs together, how does it feel when certain places don't buy into an album?
I think people might just be a little bit confused, honestly. I think if they go back and listen to 'Misery' now, you'll find it really quite heavy and pretty similar to our new record, but I understand that people are terrified of change. When they hear a band do something slightly different to what they are usually doing, it's a kick in the guts - it's happened to me with some of my favourite bands, but we definitely swung to the fences on it, and they've loved it in certain countries.
On that album tour, we did Germany, and we played 'Feels Like I'm Dying', it went off. I think it's mostly more of an industry thing, we didn't get invited back to the festivals in Europe this summer. Probably because it wasn't a particularly heavy album, and it wasn't received well here, but that's fine. We'll get invited back next year just because we did a blast beat and a fucking breakdown. But that's just how it is, it's slightly disheartening but, again, like I said, it did so many good things for us in America.

Is that something you think is relative to being in an alternative genre?
The same people who are begging for change, are the ones that shit on you when you do change. It's an echo chamber, people going 'You sound different, I don't like you. Now you sound the same, and I don't like it anymore either'. You just can't listen to it, you have to do what you want, and just play the game - it is what it is.

Taken from the April issue of Upset. The Amity Affliction's album 'Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them' is out now.

The Amity Affliction: "With this record, we've nailed it"

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The Amity Affliction: "With this record, we've nailed it"

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