image by Scott Gallagher

Although the ‘Brothers In Arms’ tour is done and dusted, I needed the lapse in time to reflect upon what I saw that night in Sydney at The Amity Affliction show. If you don’t know, The Amity Affliction is a post-hardcore band that rose out of Brisbane in the earlier parts of the 2000’s. The first time I saw the band was in 2007/2008 on their ‘Severed Ties’ tour, it took place at The Manning Bar and it was a first for a number of things for me that night, having not ever seen them live but not even hearing of them before that night.

Since then I have seen them play a number festivals such as Big Day Out and Soundwave, I’ve seen them support bands such as Bring Me The Horizon and Misery Signals, and I have seen them grown from strength to strength in terms of putting on a headline show, from the Manning Bar, to Spectrum to the UNSW Roundhouse to their biggest headlining venue in NSW, Big Top Luna Park, where the Brothers In Arms rolled into.

I have been seeing them live for the better part of 5 years, I’ve seen them play a whole lotta times, including 3 album cycles, starting with ‘Severed Ties’ to ‘Youngbloods’ to now their biggest album to date – ‘Chasing Ghosts’, but I must say, after 5 years of seeing them live, this last performance was the best I have seen the band play.

I don’t know exactly what it is, but they have just stepped up to the next level, I think it was a combination of overall sound, perfecting all songs live to an absolute tee and stage presence, they owned that enormous stage. The thing I loved the most was the combination of songs between albums, they still played songs from ‘Severed Ties’ for the (true) old fans, which most bands don’t do nowadays as soon as they get big, they just play songs off the album(s) that made them big, that as a true fan pisses me off, but in this case Amity did not disappoint.

Admittingly, the songs off ‘Chasing Ghosts’ were by far the standout, although they sound great on the record, they are tracks that are meant to be heard live. You can really see the bands passion for the tracks on that album coming across live, and seeing their reaction when 3,500 people are singing the words back, it’s an experience in itself – it must be the most amazing experience for them, or any other band to have people singing back what you wrote.

So the moral to my blabbing is that The Amity Affliction have come a long way since the first time I saw them, and any fan of this genre or just music in general needs to listen to not only ‘Chasing Ghosts’ but their own catalogue, they deserve your attention!

-TR