'I Tried To Quit The Band': Joel Birch Discusses The Journey To The Amity Affliction's New Album, 'House Of Cards'

Thomas Jackson

The Amity Affliction's Joel Birch discusses recording new album 'House Of Cards', playing new music on their upcoming regional tour, and how he hated the 'Let The Ocean Take Me' tenth anniversary shows.

The Amity Affliction(Credit: Tom Ise)

The Amity Affliction

Earlier today, Queensland metalcore icons The Amity Affliction announced that their new album House Of Cards will be released on April 24th – punctuating the news by sharing the record’s title track.

The new album – their ninth – is their first since they parted ways with co-vocalist and bassist Ahren Stringer after a turbulent 12-month period, following a breakdown in the relationship between him and the band. Stepping up on clean vocals and bass is new member Jonny Reeves.

Singer Joel Birch shares that he has previously hated recording new music the whole time he’s been in the band, but this album was “probably the first time I’ve enjoyed myself.” He also believes it’s their best album since Let The Ocean Take Me.

He speaks with The Music over Zoom while golfing in Queensland after a morning surf. The fact that they’ve already ripped the band-aid off and released the standalone track All That I Remember last year has calmed Birch’s nerves about introducing this new era of The Amity Affliction to the world.

“We've already had the onslaught of people talking shit online,” Birch explains. “It seems to have mostly died down. So I'm not that worried, and I also think it's good. I'm very happy with [House of Cards].

“I guess the last couple of albums felt a little bit forced. I don't want to take away from them or anything. But this one just felt way more cohesive, and I guess when we got into the studio, we were really on a mission to do something good.

“We spent a lot of time before we got there nipping and tucking and making sure we were happy.”

2023 and 2024 were the worst eighteen months of Birch’s life. Many people would presume that the album titled House of Cards would be compared to The Amity Affliction's fragility at the time.

However, most of the songs are written about Birch’s mother dying and there are “no songs on [House Of Cards] that have anything to do with Ahren.”

“My friend died at the start of 2024 from cancer,” he explains. “My mum died in the middle of the year. She drank herself to death. I tried to quit the band at the start of 2024 and got talked out of it by our manager, and everything blew up. I’m sure you saw it. It’s been tough 'cause I haven't really said anything the whole time. The only conscious decision with the album was to absolutely not write anything about [the band].

“It’s 90% about my mother, and then 10% is really just personal, some other stuff. It all ties together; that's why in Heaven Sent it says brother and sister. I wrote that song for my brother and sister because they're also dealing with our mother, and she was pretty horrible. She was not a very good person. She was not nurturing or kind or anything that you [would] expect from a mother.

“So, a lot of the album for me is musing on the fact that we expect a certain type of behaviour from a mother and my brother and sister, and I didn't get it,” he continues. “It's very confronting, and it's very confusing, especially because we gave my mum a lot of grace on her deathbed, and she actually cut all three of us off two weeks before she died. Stopped talking to us and told the hospital not to tell us any updates. So, she died alone.”

The upcoming 21-date regional tour from February to March will mark the first time Australian fans can see The Amity Affliction in this new era live. The new album will not be out before the end of this tour, but the attendees will still be able to hear unreleased new music.

“I think we might be playing four songs off the album,” Birch muses. “There's three songs people won't know, and we're just like, ‘Fuck it, we wanna do it, we're gonna do it.’

“Everything feels new, it feels good. We are in a good place, as a band and as a group of people. I guess by putting those songs in the setlist, we're not scared of playing them, we feel confident that even though people won’t know them, they'll be like, ‘Oh, I can move to it.’

“There will be only one song out when the tour starts, and then by the end of it, only two songs out. But we're playing four.”

The last tour that The Amity Affliction performed together before Stringer parted ways with the band was the ten-year anniversary Australian tour of Let The Ocean Take Me.

It was meant to be a celebration for them – and the fans – of their magnum opus. For casual fans who aren’t in the music news cycle or keeping up with the band’s social media, they may never have realised anything was wrong behind the scenes.

The shows were performed to perfection and were a nostalgic commemoration for the thousands in attendance. Unfortunately, despite the professional performance on stage, it wasn’t an opportunity for the band to come together internally to cheer a monumental chapter in their story.

“I hated it, we all hated it,” Birch admits. “The whole thing’s a shame. No one wanted it. It's a waste, a huge waste. What do you do? Every addict you ever see, if they don't get help or make changes in their life... It's the same for everyone, no matter what it is. Could be anything, could be weed, could be gambling, alcohol, or hard drugs. I've seen it across the spectrum of people.

“Man, I just got told last week, this story of a guy who was a millionaire, very successful business, got a divorce, and started dating a young chick. She was smoking meth, he got into meth, then within 12 months, he had nothing. Nothing. If it comes for you, it comes for you.

“I've been fortunate in my life where I’ve never come to any massive decision in my life where it hasn't been a rock-solid black and white situation. When I was young, I was homeless, I was doing drugs, and I remember the guy that I did them with all the time was like, ‘Oh, hey, I’ve started, like, shooting it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, like I'm not doing that.’ And I stopped on the spot, and like that, changed everything because I was homeless, didn't have a job.

“Then I was like, alright, ‘Well, I'm not doing that, I should get a job now,‘“ he continues. “Then I got a job, and then I met people through that job and started another band, and then because of that band I ended up in Amity. I've had these things happen to me throughout my life, where it's like, oh, it's like the sliding doors thing. Like, do you go through this one or this one?”

While The Amity Affliction have historically been quite outspoken in regard to issues that are often overlooked or simply not discussed publicly, Birch notes that while he is in a place of privilege where luck has been on his side, others haven’t been so fortunate.

“I just seem to have been lucky enough to have the wherewithal, and I've been able to dig deep to make the right choice,” he explains. “But I've seen many people not do that, and it is what it is. I don't look down on anyone who has suffered from addiction and is suffering from addiction. It is absolutely a disease; it is absolutely an under-addressed problem in Australia, and we have a massive, massive problem with drinking culture and gambling culture.

“We have extreme levels of methamphetamine use across the board because we don't have the social structures in place to address it. While we exist in a society that is unwilling to look at the ugly parts of itself, it's gonna stay the same, and you can't really blame the people who have fallen into it for falling into it.

“I don't hold any vitriol there for anyone that is suffering from it because it's fucking horrible,” he continues. “It's miserable. I remember being at the end of drinking and being miserable and drinking and just being like ‘I have to drink.’ Like, if I didn't drink, I felt sick, and then when I'm drinking, it's fun for half an hour and then all of a sudden I’m like smoking cigarettes with Elliot Smith on my headphones, fucking wanting to kill myself. I'm just like, ‘What am I doing?’”

As Birch puts it, he found himself in a situation wherein he was presented with a hard choice of either drinking or being in his son’s life. “That was it,” he says. “It's hard. It's gonna be hard to do, but it's an easy choice for me to make. I'm lucky. Not everyone is presented with such a clear and easy path to make a choice.

“Not only can I not be on a high horse about being sober, it's not something any sort of person should ever do because I'm only one really bad day away from slipping back into it,” he continues.

“I know what it looks like. I've seen people stop drinking, start drinking, stop drinking, start drinking. Every time I did, it was like a triple or quadruple down on how much I was drinking previously.

It’s now been more than a year since the tenth anniversary Australian tour of Let The Ocean Take Me wrapped in November 2024. The Amity Affliction have only played one Australian show since then – at Darwin’s BASSINTHEGRASS festival last May.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then – whether it be personnel or in regard to releasing new music – but the forthcoming tour from the band is the fresh start of a new era, new memories, and a newfound sense of optimism for a better future.

“I look back on that album tour, and I hate it,” Birch admits. “It left a very bad taste in my mouth. I didn't enjoy myself. Dan [Brown, guitar] didn't, Joe [Longobardi, drums] didn't. The whole crew didn’t. No one was happy. It’s like this fucking shining moment in our career, and we were barely holding it together. So it is a shame, but it also is what it is, and I can't change it.

“All I can do now is look forward to what's coming and what we're working on and what we're trying to build on top of what is there from the last 20 years.”

The Amity Affliction will release House Of Cards on April 26th, with pre-orders for the new album available now. Tickets to their forthcoming Australian tour are on sale now.

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