Australian metalcore heavyweights The Amity Affliction have released their ninth studio album House Of Cards via Pure Noise Records, alongside the single and video for ‘Kickboxer’.
The album marks a significant new chapter for the band, featuring new clean vocalist Jonny Reeves alongside founding screamer Joel Birch, guitarist Dan Brown and drummer Joe Longobardi. The addition of Reeves brings new chemistry and effortless contrast to a band that was already firing on all cylinders, and the result is some of the heaviest and most cohesive music in their catalogue.
For Birch, this is a deeply personal record. He explained: “The album is almost entirely written about my mother. If it isn’t about my mother specifically, it is about things that I have experienced that are directly tied to my experience growing up and where that has landed me now.”
On ‘Kickboxer’, Birch revealed the track’s brilliantly unexpected origin: “The way this song came about is very funny: Dan was watching Kickboxer on the bus and there is a line in the movie where Van Damme says ‘It’s good stuff, what is this?’ and the answer is ‘translated, kiss of death.’ Dan sent me a text later that night… ‘Hey can you write a song with Kiss of Death in it?'”
He continued: “I wrote that song in my bunk on tour, and it’s just a song expressing my distaste for the way I grew up having people pray for me, or lay hands on me to pray, and how I’m not waiting on some divine being to come and save me from any situation I am in.”
The Amity Affliction will bring the House Of Cards tour to Europe and the UK this autumn with Silent Planet, Varials and Orthodox in support.
UK Dates:
Sat 10 Oct: O2 Ritz, Manchester
Sun 11 Oct: O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
Mon 12 Oct: Rock City, Nottingham
Tue 13 Oct: O2 Academy, Bristol
Tickets are on general sale now.
