Live Review: The Amity Affliction

Several hundred lucky punters spent their Australia Day in the intimate surrounds of the Bridgeway Hotel with three-time entrants in the 2014 edition of triple j’s The Hottest 100, The Amity Affliction, as part of the regional Weigh Down Under Tour.

Local four-piece The Ghost Orchestra opened the night with a flurry of gritty rock’n’roll-inspired hardcore riffage providing the driving force of the band’s tight sound, which contained copious amounts of groove. The last few tracks saw the vocalist enter the audience to promote more involvement, winning over a few hundred new fans.

Aussie hardcore legend/dickhead Michael Crafter and his band Confession were next to take the stage and opened strong with an old classic in Send A Meat Truck. Though it was great to see the band blow the dust off some older tracks, this was definitely not the best Confession performance this reviewer has witnessed. Crafter’s vocals were often out of time, whilst the rest of the band gave a decent enough performance. Despite this, it’s always interesting watching Crafter passionately jump around and dedicate a song or two to his beloved Adelaide Crows.

Following them, Byron Bay five-piece In Hearts Wake were outstandingly tight and sounded absolutely huge with the assistance of samples and numerous sub drops. This is one band that constantly outshines their own recorded material when performing live; it seems as though the energy of their performances cannot be captured on disk. Both clean and dirty vocals were close to flawless and the band showed immense improvement since their last time in Adelaide. The lighting proved their greatest downfall as the band spent the majority of the time playing in shadows, leaving this reviewer a little disconnected but as a consequence, we were provided a good chance to simply listen to what was a sublime musical effort and a perfect warm-up  they were for the eagerly anticipated headliners.

Vocally, this was definitely not The Amity Affliction’s finest hour, with a few shaking moments from both singers. Clean vocalist Ahren Stringer often chose to sing in a lower octave to ensure the complete nailing of pitches. This was, however, balanced by throwing in some uncharacteristic screams to thicken Birch’s efforts. The smaller-sized venue meant that there was no use of any flashy pyrotechnics or visual enhancements that has become almost synonymous with any Amity performance. Regardless, watching the post-hardcore juggernauts was still a great way to round out what was a decent Australia Day concert.