Photo by Tom Brown // Story by Sosefina Fuamoli
To say the last 12 months have been anything short of chaotic for The Amity Affliction, would be an understatement.
While the band’s touring schedule kept them on the road for much of the year, the group was also navigating fresh upheaval and moments of crisis behind the scenes. Their split with founding member Ahren Stringer in February 2025 threw The Amity Affliction into the spotlight in a way that exposed fractures and questions, leaving fans and casual observers wondering what this would mean for the band moving forward.
By May however, The Amity Affliction made their first step forward into new territory: releasing a powerful track in "All That I Remember", a reminder that the ferocity at the heart of their music was more than able to still be explored with passion and hunger.
The track featured clean vocalist Jonathon Reeves (ex-Kingdom of Giants), who had already been featuring on international tour legs with The Amity Affliction, yet this was the introduction of his presence as something more permanent.
A new voice and creative influence entered the re-established band dynamic of Joel Birch, Dan Brown and Joe Longobordi. With Reeves’ official addition to The Amity Affliction, the band was able to breathe with comfort for the first time in a little while.
“Going into ‘All That I Remember’, we were wondering what we’d even sound like,” Birch says.
Casting his mind back to this period of time for the band, he recalls the particular anxieties he experienced when looking towards a version of The Amity Affliction without Stringer.
“I’d be lying and I’d be a fucking idiot if I were to tell you everything was all good, that everything was sweet,” he explains with a small laugh. “The discussion around a lot of it was that this might be it for us. We wanted to keep going, so we decided to at least try.”
“When Jonny sent us his parts for that song, we knew it was going to be okay,” he adds. “He sent us vocals [for ‘All That I Remember’] that he had recorded in his fucking pantry at home in Sacramento. It wouldn’t have been possible with anyone else, you know? He’s brought a lot to the table.
He’s not just a guy who sings and plays bass. He is also a production nerd, like Dan. He also writes songs for other bands, like Dan does. I was worried, personally, just because I’ve only heard Ahren in the band. I didn’t know how it would go. It was this or nothing for us, though. We wanted to keep going.”
The release of the song heralded a new chapter ready to be cracked open and now, almost a year on from that release, The Amity Affliction is excited to launch headfirst into their next creative arc – their ninth studio album, House Of Cards.
Set to be released during the band’s North American co-headline tour with August Burns Red, House Of Cards serves as a blistering moment of re-entry for a band who has dragged themselves over coals in order to achieve a sense of peace and optimism moving forward.
Teased with singles including the album’s title track, "Bleed", and the latest track "Heaven Sent", House Of Cards provides a reset moment that Birch explains was much needed.
“I am really proud of it, especially doing it under the type of pressure we did it under. I think we did a really good job,” the vocalist says. “Obviously, having a new singer is a thing that we had to think about. A lot of the ways in which we put the songs together reflect this consideration; we made sure that Jonny has his own space.”
“As we were putting it together, we were already talking about the next project. It’s just how it goes,” Birch adds. “By the time we start recording, we’ve already written it – we’ve never gone into the studio with a half-baked idea or just one riff. Dan was already talking about bringing some earlier Amity line for line stuff back for the next album. We were very aware that we wanted space between everything that was happening. I think it’s worked very well as a result.”
When we speak with Birch, he has been enjoying a rare period of downtime in Upstate New York.
The first months of the year were spent touring regional Australian cities, a tour Birch proudly states was Amity’s most successful regional tour by numbers. Not long after the band’s 21 date Australian run wrapped, Birch found himself heading back to the US, anticipating another fulfilling jaunt, reconnecting with American audiences around the country.
Away from the chaos of the shows and unhealthy echo chamber of the online space, Birch is calm and ready to share this new music – a collection of songs that speak to his personal experiences, trauma and growth, perhaps in a more visceral way than has been heard before.
Any nerves he had tied up with the release of House Of Cards dissipated with the release of the title track in February.
“Putting out ‘House of Cards’ was much scarier than putting out the full album,” Birch laughs. “I think people will be wondering why we released the singles in the way we did, once they hear the whole record. But we did it on purpose. The album makes so much more sense as a whole.”
Noting that their latest single "Heaven Sent" is probably the most quintessentially ‘Amity’ song of the roll out, Birch was conscious of the type of impression he wanted to lead with when it came to this new era.
"Heaven Sent", with its dip into a traumatic childhood memory, didn’t sit right with Birch as the first single.
“We went back and forth between that song and ‘House Of Cards’ coming out first and I didn’t want to lead with the first line of ‘Heaven Sent’,” he explains. “I understood that it was probably the song that should go first, but I didn’t want it to be out there as the first taste of the new stuff.”
“I’ve talked about this in other interviews, but I really do read what’s going on on our social media channels,” he adds.
“It’s a hostile environment but for me in particular, the way everything has played out on the internet, it’s like I’m the only person who had anything to do with anything. First of all, whatever. Second of all, you don’t know anything. But then third of all, it does stab like a dagger in the heart!
I read someone’s post that was like, “I hope they write some more hopeful songs, because they’ve been miserable for so long.” I was like damn, it’s true! That was a conscious thing for me too, before [2018’s] Misery. I was sick of writing happy endings, I didn’t feel happy. So I stopped writing them. You can get in a groove of writing like that so when I read that comment it stopped me like…yeah, that’s fair. That’s why ‘House Of Cards’ came out first.”
When listeners have a chance to lose themselves in the full House Of Cards experience, it is an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the chemistry of Birch, Brown, Longobordi and Reeves.
For longtime Amity Affliction fans, it’s a chance to reconnect with the alchemy that exists between Birch and Brown in particular. Brown, whose production signature is a strong highlight of the record, helmed this project with a meticulous ear and vision for the music.
It’s this vision and dedication to curation that led to House Of Cards’ overall cohesion. As Birch says, this nature has been threaded throughout The Amity Affliction’s music for a long time, and it’s all been down to the way Brown works.
“He is really meticulous, even down to reshaping the way I say things,” Birch explains.
“At this point, when I’m dealing with Dan, it’s just like…if it sucks, we hit stop and go again. We don’t need to talk about it. If it’s not what he wants, we won’t keep it anyway. It’s not really a discussion. He’s produced the last two albums and an EP, and it’s worked so much better than having a producer come in.
I don’t like fucking around, I don’t want to talk it out. If it sucks, it fucking sucks. It might not suck as well, he might just think we can beat it. Make it better. He doesn’t want to sit on anything and I think that’s the best thing about having him produce the music. Because he writes the music, he knows exactly how he wants the vocals to sit and flow through everything.”
Looking to the rest of 2026, The Amity Affliction will tour South America before finishing out May with a performance at Ciudad de México, Mexico. Things pick back up again in September, with the band returning to Europe and UK for shows that run into October.
Already, the new material that has made its way into the band’s current live shows has been landing positively with the band and audiences alike. For Birch, it’s been a great way to gauge the temperature of new music in the live space; it’s also made him impatient.
“We’ve been playing four songs in the show so far,” he says. “At first, only one of them had been released, but we just really wanted to play the new stuff, fuck it.”
“We hadn’t done it in so long, maybe more than 16 years. I don’t think any songs on Youngbloods (2010) were fully finished before we did the album, so I think maybe before Severed Ties (2008), we played songs that weren’t out. It didn’t matter, because we were playing to 200 or 300 people. We just went out and did it.”
Birch admits that even with the release of House Of Cards, the Stringer-shaped elephant in the room is likely to linger for people in the fan community and those in the wider heavy space. At one point in time, this may have threatened this rebuilt foundation that the band has managed to lay.
For right now though, The Amity Affliction are in an optimistic position; their outlook is positive for what is to come.
“We feel good about it,” Birch says. “I’m obviously hoping that, at some point, we can feel good about it and not be concerned with the hundred people online who are there to repeat the same bullshit every time we post anything. I just think in this day and age, it’s par for the course, you know?”
“I look at what’s happening with Turnstile…like they parted with their guitarist four years ago and he’s still chirping online, and people are listening. It’s like, he’s not in the band. They’ve got nothing to do with him anymore. But it’s just a thing that is going to happen, I guess.”
“We’re feeling pretty optimistic about things,” Birch muses about where the band stands to go next. “Not only that, we’re feeling really positive and very comfortable where we are as a band. It’s so important.”
“With the awareness we have regarding what people are saying, the attitude in the band in general is so far removed from it. It’s positive. We’ve got shows in Europe coming up in five months that are already nearly sold out. Everything is actually good. We are good. Things are looking up.”
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House of Cards, the new full length from The Amity Affliction arrives April 24th via Pure Noise Records. Order the album - HERE
The Amity Affliction join August Burns Red on the Spring Horizons Tour starting April 10th in Worcester, MA. The run will feature support from Boundaries as well as select dates with Heavensgate and Dreamwake. See the complete list of dates below. Get tickets - HERE
THE SPRING HORIZONS TOUR 2026
4/10 — Worcester, MA — The Palladium*
4/11 — New Haven, CT — College Street Music Hall*
4/12 — Pittsburgh, PA — Stage AE
4/14 — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore
4/15 — Atlanta, GA — Tabernacle
4/16 — Orlando, FL — House of Blues
4/18 — New Orleans, LA — The Fillmore
4/19 — Dallas, TX — The Bomb Factory
4/21 — Houston, TX — House of Blues
4/22 — San Antonio, TX — Vibes Event Center (Outdoors)
4/24 — Phoenix, AZ — The Marquee
4/25 — San Diego, CA — Soma
4/26 — Anaheim, CA — House of Blues
4/28 — Sacramento, CA — Channel 24
4/29 — Garden City, ID — Revolution Concert House
5/1 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Union Event Center
5/2 — Denver, CO — The Fillmore
5/3 — Omaha, NE — The Astro Theater
5/5 — Minneapolis, MN — The Fillmore
5/6 — Milwaukee, WI — The Rave
5/8 — Chicago, IL — Riviera Theatre
5/9 — Royal Oak, MI — Royal Oak Music Theatre
5/10 — Toronto, ON — History
5/12 — Montreal, QC — Mtelus
5/13 — Brooklyn, NY — Brooklyn Paramount
5/15 — Baltimore, MD — Nevermore Hall
5/16 — Columbus, OH — Sonic Temple**
5/17 — Philadelphia, PA — The Fillmore
*With Dreamwake, no Heavensgate
**Festival Date (ABR + TAA Only)
