LIVE REVIEW: The Amity Affliction, Fit For A King, Gideon, SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Electric Brixton, London, 15/01/2023
Photo Credit: Abbi Draper-Scott (Birmingham – 17/01/2023)
It’s been a fair few months since Queensland quartet The Amity Affliction have been this side of the seas since the bands slot on The Jägermeister Stage at last year’s edition of Slam Dunk Festival, a performance that wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for the Australian metalcore outfit. Stopping abruptly mid-set to ensure a medical emergency got attended to swiftly on the fields of Hatfield, in turn interrupting and prolonging the bands set for all the right respectable reasons. To say the last time The Amity Affliction appeared on UK shores was eventful would be an understatement.
However, this time around there was no diving in to save the day, only mesmerising, beautiful and hard hitting metalcore being captured majestically down at Brixton’s Electric. Coming in company of California openers SeeYouSpaceCowboy, who exhibited an emotional live rollercoaster of their latest LP The Romance of Affliction (8/10), mosh-pit destroying openers Gideon (7/10) and Texas quintet Fit For A King on their return to the UK for the first time in three years included daredevil bass spins courtesy of Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary, electrifying guitar solos coming from Bobby Lynge and visceral vocals of leader Ryan Kirby, who treated the crowd to not one but two gut punching performances of The Price of Agony after an initial technical glitch (9/10) it was later The Amity Affliction’s time to shine on to all their friends present in London.
Fan favourites and set opener Pittsburgh and All My Friends Are Dead ignite the fire burning inside the 1.5k crowd that cram into the Electric and when that fire gets unleashed it rips through the venue like a wildfire. Switching from stunning cleans to soul shattering screams in a split second and the batter of an eyelid, in the first two songs alone goosebumps were raised and spines tingled to Pittsburgh’s heavenly atmospherics and All My Friends Are Dead’s heart crushing breakdown.
“I wrote this next song about being at rock bottom and feeling like no one can reach you” explains Amity vocalist Joel Birch before initiating Drag The Lake; a standout song taken from the band’s sixth studio album Misery. Whilst cathartic in its lyrics, one’s which are sung at the top of everyone’s lungs filling the room with pure vibrant warmth, dive below the songs surface and there is carefully hidden pain, agony and hurt and live its sentiment and meaning hits even harder, something that would come back to induce the tears for a second time around with the latter Don’t Lean on Me.
Where Chasing Ghosts caters for the fan that has stuck around The Amity Affliction since 2012, elsewhere new number Show Me Your God exhibits everything we have to still look forward to from one of the most emotionally driven bands in metal and hardcore this year and closer Soak Me In Bleach gloriously pulls a close on the curtains for The Amity Afflictions London headliner, a show that is completely cathartic in every way possible.
10/10
Written By: Katie Conway-Flood
Photo Credit: Abbi Draper-Scott (Birmingham – 17/01/2023)
