For more than two decades, The Amity Affliction have been the standard-bearer for heavy music in Australia, a band whose DNA is woven from twin strands of melodic catharsis and brutal honesty.
But, as 2026 dawns, they’re entering a chapter that feels markedly different from anything that came before.
With a new lineup, a self-produced sonic pivot, and a new album, House of Cards, frontman Joel Birch is ready to pull back the curtain on the most emotionally exposed period of his life.
Ahead of their massive regional tour, we sat down with Birch to discuss the weight of loss, the psychic toll of life online, and why this record finally feels like a return home.
There is a sense of renewal in the Amity camp. Following a turbulent year that saw the departure of founding member, bassist and clean vocalist Ahren Stringer, and the arrival of Jonny Reeves, Amity have gravitated back toward a sound Birch describes as a spiritual successor to their Youngbloods era.
“I think that me and Dan [Brown] were on the same page for this one where we just wanted to do what people love about the band,” Birch says of the songwriting process. “And I mean, that’s just screaming and a big chorus. It’s what we’ve done forever. We just wanted to make sure they were good ones.”
That shift didn’t happen in a vacuum — Birch is acutely aware that Amity’s last few records carried a relentless emotional weight by design. “I remember reading one comment online that said, ‘I just hope they write something with a little more hope this time, because the last couple of records have been so grim,’” he recalls. “And I was like, ‘True.’”
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For years, Birch felt a self-imposed responsibility to temper the band’s darkness with reassurance — a habit formed early in Amity’s career. “It was honest in that I believed in what I was making,” he says, “but it wasn’t honest in the sense of being true to how I was actually feeling.” House of Cards represents a recalibration rather than a retreat, a record that allows space for light without denying the shadow.
The first taste of this new era is the album’s title track. It wasn’t an easy choice for a lead single, with the band agonising between it and another track, “Heaven Sent”. Ultimately, it was the opening moments that tipped the balance.
“I think my big argument was that ‘House of Cards’ starts so nice,” Birch explains. “The first line of ‘Heaven Sent’ is a very nasty, sad line. I was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s the foot to put forward.’ It’s pretty bad.”
While the music may feel like a return to Amity’s roots, the lyrical core of House of Cards is some of the most confronting Birch has ever written. Much of the album functions as a processing space for the death of his mother; a relationship defined less by closure than by unresolved absence.
Birch is strikingly candid about the emotional dissonance that followed her passing. “I didn’t cry when my mum died,” he admits. When he saw her in hospital near the end, the experience felt dislocated rather than devastating. “When she was dying and I looked at her, I felt like she wasn’t there,” he reflects. “She’d been gone for a long time. It was weird.”
That sense of estrangement bleeds through songs like most recent standalone single, “All That I Remember”, and the album’s title track, which don’t just mourn loss but interrogate it, examining what happens when the parental figure you’re meant to grieve never fully existed in the way you needed. “My mother knew only abuse and isolation, even in death,” Birch has said of the album’s themes. “She died as she lived — paranoid and alone.”
For Birch, writing these songs was as much about giving language to shared pain as it was about personal catharsis. “House of Cards”, for example, was written with his siblings in mind, a gesture of solidarity rather than spectacle. “They got the lyrics before Dan did,” he says. “I was like, ‘Hey, I’m writing this.’ And they loved it.”
For a band of Amity’s stature, one might expect high-end studios and name-brand producers. Instead, House of Cards was recorded in isolation, with makeshift studios assembled inside rented houses, soundproofed with mattresses.
“We recorded in a house on the water in the middle of nowhere,” Birch says. “It’s the first [time] I’ve ever enjoyed recording. Ever.”
That enjoyment came from autonomy. Guitarist Dan Brown handled production duties in-house, removing the pressure and rigidity of traditional studio environments. “There was stress,” Birch admits, “but it was manageable. And it was fun.”
The sense of ease didn’t mean the process was without its moments. On the first day of vocal tracking, Birch found himself mentally spiralling — so much so, he briefly forgot how to do the one thing he’s built a career on.
“I fucked with myself so hard that I couldn’t scream,” he laughs. “I’m not talking about not liking how it sounded — I mean I literally forgot how to do it. Noises were coming out of me that I didn’t know I could make.”
The pressure, he admits, was entirely self-inflicted. “I knew the performance I had to give on this record, and I got in my own head about it.”
After an hour of frustration, Birch did the only thing that made sense at the time: he went to bed. “I was so angry I just went upstairs and laid down,” he recalls. “Woke up still pissed off, brushed my teeth so my breath didn’t stink, and went back down like, ‘Dan, let me try again.’”
This time, muscle memory kicked back in. “It sounded like shit because I’d just woken up, but I did it. And once I did it, everything was fine.”
For Birch, the moment was a reminder of how much of his vocal approach lives in instinct rather than technique. “I don’t have a system,” he says. “It’s just muscle memory. Once that came back, it was smooth sailing.”
The presence of Jonny Reeves also reshaped the internal dynamic. Where previous sessions could feel tense or overthought, this one was marked by ease. “Jonny’s just so easy to work with,” Birch says. “He’s got a great ear for melody, and he really gets what Amity is supposed to be.”
One of the album’s most aggressive moments, “Bleed”, turns its gaze outward, a visceral rejection of the culture of online scrutiny that Birch has struggled with for years.
“I handle social media very poorly,” he admits. “I find myself getting into arguments with people I don’t even know. It’s this parasocial thing where people think they know you, and think they can say whatever they want to you.”
Over time, Birch has reframed that hostility as projection rather than critique. “They’re not actually talking to me,” he says. “They’re talking to an effigy. I represent something to them.”
The song’s central line — “Hate is easy, love yourself” — is less a moral directive than a reminder. “That line’s for me,” Birch says. “It’s so easy to hate yourself. It’s much harder to give yourself a break.”
His solution has become increasingly blunt: disengagement. “When it gets too much, I just delete the apps,” he says. “When they acknowledge you, that’s when they feel real. And I don’t need to do that.”
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The album’s aesthetic mirrors its emotional intent. For the artwork, Birch collaborated with long-time Hedi Xandt, who did the art for Parkway Drive’s 2022 release, Darker Still.
“I wanted to play with the idea of what’s holy and what’s not,” Birch explains. Raised in the church, he has long used religious iconography as a site of interrogation rather than reverence. “The mother figure is meant to be this holy, nurturing thing,” he says. “And mine wasn’t.”
The imagery — masks, inverted figures, exposed ribcages — speaks to truth breaking through imposed narratives. Birch handed over creative control more willingly than ever before. “Fuck no, it wasn’t hard,” he laughs. “I loved letting go.”
Kicking off the House of Cards era with a regional tour was a deliberate choice. Starting February 13th on the Sunshine Coast, the band will visit towns like Mackay, Airlie Beach, and Tamworth, places Birch still considers foundational to Amity’s identity.
“We’re a regional band,” he says. “We started in Gympie. Those kids don’t get every show. When you go there, it means more.”
The tour will also introduce fans to unreleased material, including “House of Cards”, “Bleed”, “Heaven Sent”, and a track titled “Kickboxer”. The first show lands on Birch’s son’s birthday, in the place he now calls home. “I get to spend the day with him and then go play a show,” he smiles. “It’s perfect.”
As House of Cards approaches its April release, Birch seems less concerned with expectation and more grounded in purpose. “There’s actually a bit of hope on this record,” he says. “I’ve found moments where I can say, ‘Actually, I’m okay.’”
For The Amity Affliction, this album isn’t a reinvention so much as a reckoning: proof that survival doesn’t always look like triumph, and that rebuilding can be quieter, steadier, and more honest than collapse.
The Amity Affliction’s new album House of Cards will be released in April 2026. Their 2026 regional tour with In Hearts Wake and RedHook begins February 13th (ticket information here).
