Interview with Joel Birch of The Amity Affliction

Words by Brendan Monteiro

The atmosphere inside The Amity Affliction’s dressing room is reminiscent to a mini house party, there’s members of other various bands coming in and out and with profanities and laughs pouring through the constant opening and closing doors, the mood inside is of total excitement, with the usual sight of beer cans cascading the counter tops as party decorations. Joel Birch walks out through the dressing room with an ice cold fosters clutched in one hand and the atmosphere changes a little. Maybe a bit more serious now but as time speeds on the course of our interaction becomes less of an interview and more of a hearty chat. The Amity Affliction had not been on my radar for that long but after speaking for a bit with Joel Birch the sudden desire and addictive urge to hear more of them started to take over. As live sets go they play like ninjas, drop-kicking the shit out of any and all who stand in their way, what’s more is how Troy Brady incredibly managed to play their entire tour with only 2 fingers on his fret hand, very impressive indeed. This is a band you have to hear and hopefully one that you will be making a lot more headway in the future!

Lets start this one a little more differently than usual, I thought Australians don’t drink Fosters, what’s going on here?

We don’t, I f****** hate this stuff but they put it on the rider and they just presumed that we did so that is pretty much it.

I thought as much, so getting in to the band now, can you give a bit of detail as to how the band was formed?

Well I didn’t start the band, I joined about 6 years ago when they moved to Brisband from a small town and in 2004 we started playing shows properly. 2005 was our first tour and we got to play with Alexisonfire in Brisbane and Eighteen Visions and Shai Hulud and I was just losing my mind. Then a couple of years later we added Trad our keybordist and for the last couple of years we have been touring flat out. Last year we were on tour for about 7 or 8 months in Australia.

That is a long time.

Yeah, especially for one country. I think that we have toured everywhere in Australia that would possibly have people interested in this type of music. Australia is so vast but the amount of towns that we have passed through that we just wouldn’t play just because their is no-one there.

What about the bands name, it’s rumored to be from the movie, is that true or just a load of dirty internet lies?
 
No the band name is not from the movie, as far as I know the guys that began the band had no idea about the 1970s movie “The Amityville Horror.” The name came about well before the remake, and was formed when a close friend of theirs that they had all played in bands with died in a car crash. The ‘Amity’ part refers to friendship of course, and the ‘Affliction’ part is because they were all struggling at the time dealing with it. The guy that died was in the car with his younger sister and was only 17 years old; it was an extremely horrific time for them and the way they dealt with it was to form a band.

Wow, I didn’t expect that as a reason, that must of been hard to deal with. Keeping with the movie subject, some of the songs on Severed Ties have bits from movies, can you explain why it is you used them and did you re-record them so as to avoid copyrights laws?

We released the first pressing with them on and then removed them so as to avoid getting in trouble… Hopefully it’s worked hahaha

Everyone seems to hate tags yet everyone still uses them, how would you best describe what Amity Affliction does to someone who has never heard you before?

I gave up on that years ago, it’s just too hard to figure it out. Some people call us hardcore but it’s just silly for me because we are not a hardcore band at all. I do another band that is a hardcore band and it’s just weird for me.

And what is the whole scene like over in your native Australia?

It’s good, there are stages where it is up and down just like everywhere I guess where one city will be the mecca and then a few years later it moves on. Currently bands like Break Even and his nuts and even carpathian are just amazing bands. Also a band called Hopeless, we have just been on tour with them and they are f****** amazing, so like I said we are not really a part of that but the scene is doing really well.

Parkway Drive are another big name in the Australian scene that have been doing relatively well over in the UK.

Park is so big in Australia at the moment, they are huge and playing shows of like 6000 people the last time in Brisbane and sold something ridiculous like 35 000 dollars worth of merch. Plus they are getting huge in America too.

Do they possibly have Chopper (Mark Brandan “Chopper” Read is the Australian legendary tough man know for getting what he wants with the occasional help of a blow-torch) doing their management or something?

ha ha, no they manage themselves actually, they are the hardest working band I have ever come across in my entire life.

Ok sorry, I got a bit off track there. Severed Ties is your debut, it’s been out in Oz for a while now, do you think there will be kids in the UK that have come across your material and are fans already?

Probably not over here, back home in Brisbane there are kids that love us and come out to the shows and after it they are like “so when are you guys back here again?” and my reply is “if you come out any night you will probably run into us”.

Being from Oz have people ever commented on the fact that you sound like an American band and do you think that its just the natural Americanization of Australia?

I guess it is in a way there is some sort of gentrification going on there, we have US television and US products. The United States is pretty much doing what England did in the 1500’s now. I guess there is just an influx of American media and the quality of music there is bound to be better just because of the amount of people over there and I guess we draw from that but we don’t go out of our way to sound American.

What do you feel The Amity Affliction has to offer people that American bands can’t?

I would like to think that we are a lot more genuine because I know of a lot of bands who think “lets make this band and get f****** huge” and they write lyrics but everything is formulated for them. Lyrically I write whatever I want and not once have we ever sat down and thought “alright lets write this kind of record or this kind of song”. Music comes from us but it’s the experiences that we have kept that make it all worth it. Like we are sitting in the UK right now and that just blows my mind.

So what would be your best experience while being a part of the band?

It’s really hard to say, I get asked this all the time and I will pinpoint one and then a week later something else will come along. I guess back home selling out a venue called The Maning Bar which holds a like 850 people and we sold 950 tickets. That is probably my moment, I can’t fathom it because to me it felt like yesterday that we started and I am sat there wondering how the f*** did this happen. I landed here in London about a week before the band and as I was flying in I thought to myself “I didn’t pay for my plane ticket, I am getting paid to be over here, what the f****”. It’s just ridiculous being over here and hopefully next year with the new record there has been talk of living here for 3 months but we will see about that.

What direction has the band gone on with the new material?

I think a few of the songs have taken a bit more of a hardcore approach rather than what we have previously done. In saying that I think they might even be heavier, it’s sort of hard to say as there are three people in the band that right the music.

But it is you that adds all the lyrics though, even though there are two vocalist? What topics do you find yourself writing about more than others?

I don’t like to touch on grand matters, even though people write about it, it is such a personal matter. I don’t like to touch on politics either because at the end of the day it is a lot of the same shit. I don’t vote back home because I just don’t believe in any of it. The fact is I know it is there and I read about it and I have my opinion about it but I would rather keep it to myself.

Politics is one of those subjects that people get very touchy about.

They do, and I do aswell, not often, actually very very rarely. Actually the last election I got pretty touch because it was John Howard vs Kevin Rudd. So it was left wing vs the right wing and one of the guys in the band who didn’t really understand politics was all for the guy on the right wing and I was like “your an ordinary middle class dude and he hates you, he does not give a f**** about you. This guy is from the labour party and they are the people’s party, that’s why they call it the labour party”. I write mainly about personal things but I don’t really normally like to talk about them but Severed Ties was pretty much entirely about one topic and the next record will probably be a lot about the same.

This post is tagged Ahren Stringer, Boomtown Records, Chris Burt, Joel Birch, Ryan Burt, The Amity Affliction, Trad Nathan, Troy Brady