0
Brisbane Post-Hardcorers The Amity Affliction sound like they’d drink you under the table, scrawl lewd words on your forehead when you pass out and smash all your fine china – you know, like your Motley Crew mug or the Stella glass you stole from your local, which are exactly the sort of lads you want to make an album like this.
And it’s an absolute bloody belter. Vicious, melodic and visceral but with a wry sense of humour about it and a healthy love of partying, Severed Ties is an album which manages to sound fresh within a genre which is starting to sound increasingly more stale and cliched.
Album highlights include the manic, thrashing ‘Do You Party?’, the gloriously titled ‘Snitches get Stitches’ which makes you wonder just what the hell they’ve been up to be snitched about when paired up with second snitch song – ‘the Blair Snitch Project.’
And a bizarrely brilliant – if a little cringey, but perhaps purposefully – so cover version of the Pat Benatar classic ‘Love Is A Battlefield.’
Good work, chaps.
Album closer ‘Stairway To Hell’ is also worth noting for its thuddering, shuddering, belter of a riff and brutal use of dynamics.
However, the album makes the mistake that a great number of post-hardcore bands seem to repeat in pandering to the idea that they need to sound American when singing in a distinctly American tone when you’re not actually American is just as absurd as spending an entire album singing in a Russian accent, when you’re actually from Birmingham. You dig?.
But if you can put up with that and love your post-hardcore – then this album is an absolute must buy.