Alternative Rock
The Amity Affliction, ‘House Of Cards’
Apr
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For a while, The Amity Affliction were existing in survival mode.
Not creatively, necessarily. Take a listen to anything they’ve put out over the last two decades and it’s clear that they’ve never struggled to write metalcore ragers that carry the kind of emotional weight most bands spend their entire careers trying to fake. But as people? That’s a different story.
By the time the Australian heavyweights began piecing together what would become ‘House Of Cards’, frontman Joel Birch had lost his mother, was carrying the grief of losing a close friend, and attempting to reckon with years of chaos inside and outside of the band. For guitarist and producer Dan Brown, the headspace wasn’t much different.
When we ask Joel how close they came to throwing in the towel, his response is extremely honest.
“The only way that would have happened… We were actually all going to quit,” he says.
“It’s the inverse of what people probably assume. I had sent a message to our manager in May of 2024 saying that I wanted to leave the band, but got talked back into it, and Dan was pretty much on the same page. It took us all talking about that to realise where we were at. It was more of a self-preservation kind of situation.”
That feeling runs right through ‘House Of Cards’, an album born from grief and shared trauma, but also from clarity. One of the heaviest and most immediate records Amity have ever made, it sounds the way it does because – for the first time in a long time – they were simply making the album they wanted to make.
“It was like, nothing to lose, everything to gain,” Dan reflects.
“There was less pressure than usual, and I think we’re all much more like-minded this time around. We had a common goal, which made the whole process way easier.”
Stripping things back to the bare essentials and asking what Amity actually is in 2026, it’s the sound of a band figuring out what they are once the noise is gone and all they have to lean on is each other. This is the story of ‘House Of Cards’.
THE SOUND
Coming at such a pivotal point in Amity’s journey, following the departure of founding vocalist Ahren Stringer in 2025, there’s something noticeably sharper about ‘House Of Cards’ from the moment it begins.
Getting straight to the point, it’s an album dominated by songs that hit hard and fast, a quality that Dan attributes to a summer spent watching some of the biggest names in heavy music command huge stages across America.
“We were on a tour called Summer Of Loud in the United States,” he explains.
“On the line-up with us were bands like Killswitch Engage and Parkway Drive, bands who have these slower, more open sounds. When you watch that each day, you see how the crowd reacts to it. It’s simpler, I guess, but it works so well on that bigger scale. I grew up listening to a lot of those bands, and they’re still out there killing it. I wanted us to move in the same direction, so we started cutting out the bits we didn’t need and focusing on pure impact.”
“You want every part of the song to grab your ear,” he continues.
“We wanted every part to be interesting. I think it’s got a lot to do with social media. Everyone wants everything straight away, and that carries over into music and songwriting. You have to cut out the stuff in the middle, and just make sure every bit is as exciting as the bit that came before it. It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun one to take on.”
That feat becomes even more impressive when you learn that Dan was responsible for writing all of the music for ‘House Of Cards’, something which Joel is swift to give the guitarist his flowers for. Whilst of course there were discussions taking place between the band, the immediacy that you hear comes directly from Dan’s mind, built around the idea that every section has to earn its place in the final cut.
Don’t think for one second that the careful consideration that went into these songs means there’s any sacrificing of heaviness though. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Loaded up with nasty riffs and the kind of confrontational energy that’ll have you whipping up a circle pit in your own bedroom and sending your lampshade flying, it’s perhaps the most uncompromising incarnation of Amity to date.
“To be honest, it’s just more fun to play that stuff on stage,” Dan shrugs.
“It’s a heavier album, and we actually put out the most radio friendly song from it first. I try not to look online, but there were definitely some comments like, ‘Oh, they’re not heavy anymore’. To all those people… I say just wait. By the end of track one on this album, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
Trusting that their most aggressive instincts can coexist with the soaring choruses and cut-throat emotional clarity that have always defined them, no track embodies that feeling better than the monstrous closer ‘Eternal War’.
“When we did ‘Not Without My Ghosts’, I’d got us to 9 songs, but we wanted 10 on the album. I thought that I’d already explored everything, and I didn’t want to copy another song that we already had, so that’s why we ended up with an acoustic closer,” Dan explains.
“I didn’t want to do that with this album. I wanted to go the other way. I wanted to one-up everything we’d already done.”
“I was actually laughing when I heard it,” Joel smiles. “I was like, nah, this is crazy.”
The pair agree that if there’s one thing that makes Amity sound like Amity though, no matter ow heavy it gets, it’s the vocals. Their first full-length to feature Jonny Reeves as a permanent clean vocalist, his addition widens their sound incredibly, adding new textures alongside Joel’s signature screams. It’s a transition that feels seamless, and that’s largely thanks to Jonny’s role being approached with real intentionality, giving him space to establish his own identity in the band.
“Jonny made it super easy because he’s just got such pure talent,” Dan says.
“He’s been underutilised in the past, even thus far in our band. Having someone like that in Amity is incredible because every idea he brought to the table was good. He immediately got it, and he killed it with every melody he came up with. That made the transition so smooth for us.”
“When it came to producing the album, I was very conscious to leave both vocalists in their own zone. Moving forward, we’ll probably mix Joel with Jonny a little more, but I wanted him to have his own identity first. I want people to be able to attach to his sound and see what he brings to the band.”
THE LYRICS
For almost two decades now, Joel Birch has been a lyricist dedicated to saying the things many of us find unsayable. Delving into grief, addiction, suicidal ideation, self-destruction, and the toxicity of family ties, he’s built up a reputation as a vocalist wholly unafraid to share the truths of his lived experiences.
That’s precisely why fans have forged such deep connections with his music. Dragging uncomfortable feelings into the light and confronting them head on, his lyrics are often directly influenced by whatever hand the universe has recently dealt him. It makes sense then that much of ‘House Of Cards’ is rooted in Joel’s relationship with his late mother and the aftermath of her death in 2024.
“I’ll be honest, my headspace is never good. If my life got easy, maybe we’d run out of lyrics,” he smirks.
“My mum died, and it left my brother, my sister and I in a really shitty spot, emotionally speaking, because none of us had a good relationship with her at all,” the 44-year-old continues.
“She had made it seem to us as though each kid was the only one that had the shit relationship with her. So, we all felt really alienated, and then she died, and we actually got way closer. That’s one nice thing that’s come out of it.”
A writer who has never hidden behind metaphor for the sake of it, that complicated web of experiences and emotions sits at the heart of this record. A collection of songs that don’t reduce grief to sadness or trauma to anger, it’s an album that refuses to try and simplify something that inherently isn’t simple, allowing all of the uglier, contradictory emotions to exist at once.
That messiness is where Dan’s role becomes crucial, acting as the filter to help shape Joel’s emotional outpourings into something that fits within each song.
“I don’t edit these things,” Joel says.
“They just come out and get sent off to Dan to re-work. That’s the teamwork aspect of recording and putting these songs together. It’s trusting each other with, ‘Hey, here are these concepts and big emotions that I’ve got. Can you fit them into a three minute and thirty second song?’”
“There are a lot of songs where only the first half of what I’ve written will make it into the song,” he explains.
“‘House Of Cards’ was a rewrite, and the name of the song is actually from a lyric that wasn’t used on the album. It was, ‘You grew up in a stable home / I grew up in a house of cards’. That’s not on the record, but it’s still sort of in there.”
Amity has always held a very particular place in people’s lives, and by this point Joel is fully aware of the impact his words can have on those who listen to his songs. He knows that fans come to his band for something that can sit with them in their worst moments, and whilst he’s careful not to fall into the trap of writing what he thinks people want to hear, he’s also aware of the responsibility that comes with being in his position.
“The line, ‘hate is easy, love yourself’ in the title track is directly linked to a comment I saw on Instagram,” he reveals.
“Someone was like, ‘I hope there’s some positive or more hopeful songs on this next record. They’ve been really bleak for so long’. I realised that I also look to some songs for glimmers of hope when I’m feeling a certain way. That one comment changed how I approached writing the songs for the album.”
That doesn’t mean ‘House Of Cards’ is suddenly filled with sunshine, rainbows and forced optimism. Joel is still clear-eyed about the fact that life doesn’t come in a neat package with a ribbon wrapped around it. Instead, it’s about recognising that when things feel impossible, sometimes the bravest thing you can do is choose to keep going.
THE COLLABORATORS
Produced by Dan and mixed by Sam Bassal, ‘House Of Cards’ is a record made by people who know exactly what they want, and who trust themselves to lock in on that vision. After years of operating in a high stress environment, the ability to have that unwavering confidence in one another brings with it a palpable sense of relief. A collective exhale of sorts, it’s meant that every song on the album has been shaped by the knowledge that everyone involved is there because they want to be, not because they have to be.
“Honestly, before this album we were always waiting for something fucked to happen,” Joel shrugs.
“When Jonny first joined, I think it took us a good six months to stop feeling like something bad was about to happen. The stress of all these years has created a bond between us and our crew though. We’ve all been right down low with each other, and it seems like we’re coming back up to some highs again. I think that shared trauma brings anyone closer, like a little family.”
Sam Bassal’s role in turning these songs from demos into the finished album shouldn’t be understated either. Dan, who already has a producer’s brain and a clear vision for how these songs should sound, is still in awe of what Sam is able to pull out of the material at the final stage.
“I don’t know how he does it,” he smiles.
“What he does is wizardry. He knows how to make stuff have that hyped sound to it. We’ve had albums before where the mix sounds good, but it just doesn’t have that energy. Somehow, he seems to put that into songs and make them sound super in-your-face.”
Then there’s director Daniel Daly, a longtime visual collaborator who helped launch the band’s latest era with a jaw-dropping music video to accompany the album’s title track. Whilst budget limitations meant some of the original ambitions had to be scaled back, his unique approach to visual storytelling – shot entirely on film camera – feels all the more impactful for its stark simplicity.
“He did the ‘Soak Me In Bleach’ film clip too, and he just does simple things so well,” Dan nods.
“Simple can become boring very easily, but he’s got this artistic flair that makes it exciting whilst still being easy to digest. It was nice to have a plain white background for the video because it really emphasises our new line-up. We wanted to be able to invite people into that and say, ‘Hey, this is what the band looks like’. We didn’t want dark visuals where we stood behind rain or anything like that, we wanted to be right up front.”
THE TITLE & THE ARTWORK
Joel had brought up the title of ‘House Of Cards’ in conversation with Dan before any music was written, and it stuck almost instantly.
Their certainty over it makes sense when you realise just how perfectly that simple phrase captures the core of this album. Named after a structure that gives the illusion of stability, always just one gentle nudge away from collapse, it speaks to the idea that anything built on dishonesty will inevitably fall apart, no matter how strong it may seem.
“It was great to have that locked in before we really started on the music, because it meant we could stick to a theme,” Dan says.
“We all had that common goal, and we knew where we were trying to get to right from the very start. Everything was done on purpose, which was great for us. That’s the way I’d rather work.”
Visually, that same intention carries into the album art. Created by Hamburg-based artist and sculptor Hedi Xandt, the elegant yet deeply unsettling image centres on a dark maternal figure draped in black and red, holding a mask in her hands.
After admiring his work from afar for years, Joel leapt at the chance to collaborate with Hedi when their schedules finally lined up. Sending over the lyrics, the pair began discussing the album’s central ideas, focusing on the gap between what the idea of a mother typically represents and what that role can actually become in real life.
“He did the artwork for Parkway Drive’s album ‘Darker Still’, and I was rattled when that came out. I’d followed him on Instagram for years, and as soon as I saw the image I knew it was Hedi who’d created it. After that, I thought we’d never get to work with him,” he explains.
“I’ve done the artwork for the last three albums, and I wanted to do something different this time. We went back and forth talking about the concept of what a mother is supposed to be, and what trauma it leaves for children when that nurturing figure isn’t nurturing. That’s what the mask represents.”
THE FUTURE
For all the grief and heaviness that ‘House Of Cards’ carries, one of the most surprising things about talking to The Amity Affliction now is how peaceful they sound.
After years of pushing through and desperately trying to hold things together, they’ve now arrived at a version of their band that feels sustainable again. One where the goal isn’t to be the biggest band in the world, nor is it to prove anyone wrong, but simply trying to be content with where they are and the music they’re making.
“Really, what matters now is being happy,” Dan says.
“There was a long time where we felt like we were backed into a corner. Now though, we’re where we’ve always wanted to be, and it’s by choice. We’re so fortunate to do this, and all of us are so happy to be here and stoked to be able to still do this. We’ve been through the ringer, but we’ve popped out the other end much better off.”
Their confidence and excitement about this era show in the way Joel and Dan talk about playing the whole record live, too. The first album in a long time that they’ve felt truly deserves that treatment, it speaks volumes about what this means to them. Still, no matter what value they hold for the band, Joel remains most moved by what the songs will become once they leave their hands.
“I’ve never really tried to impose on what people take from the songs,” he says.
“One of the best things about being in Amity for me is hearing about what other people get from our songs. We had a guy come up to us recently who said his friend was having a horrid day, and he brought him over and put ‘House Of Cards’ on. He was like, ‘Listen to this line,’ and the line was, ‘Have you ever tried to love yourself?’ For me, that’s it right there. That’s what I hold dearest about being able to create music.”
It’s about writing songs that somebody else can hear their own life in and, for three and a half minutes, not feel quite so alone. It’s about surviving long enough to find some clarity in the wreckage. It’s about rebuilding something meaningful from that destruction, even if your hands are still shaking while you do it.
That’s what the purpose of The Amity Affliction was, is, and always will be.
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