The Amity Affliction
When you name your tour ‘House of Cards’, you’re risking things feeling fragile. But The Amity Affliction along with stellar opener band ORTHODOX followed by Varials and Silent Planet, didn’t only keep the cards standing but went all in on an unforgettable night in Nottinghams Holy Grail for Rock and Metal fans.
ORTHODOX opened up the bill, I’ve never seen them before, so I was interested in seeing how they carried themselves and more importantly if they sounded just as good live as they did on record. They absolutely exceeded my expectations.
They emerged from the side stage into a pit of red tinged lights and immediately initiated the chaos with their colossal ‘Sacred Place’ with its screeching guitar intro building through to its crunching end breakdown. It didn’t let up for the remainder of their set.
Varials followed next and were another first time viewing for me, and they continued the carnage and stepped it up a notch as the crowd got limbered up and more enthusiastically involved. Crowd surfers, moshing, hardcore dancing, any shape you could throw at a heavy event was being thrown all over as they paraded their heavy grooves and sludgy guitar tones throughout the Rock City hall to end with the haunting but crushing ‘I’ll Find The Dark’. With the final bellow of ‘I’ll never say goodbye’ from frontman Skyler Conder, they left a mark on Nottingham, and exited in preparation for the final band to take stage before The Amity Affliction.
Silent Planet were the penultimate band on tonight’s bill, and they’re a band I’m very familiar with so I already knew what I was going to get, crazy tones, astounding energy and hard hitting lyrics wrapped up into one very polished metalcore package.
Starting with Offwolrder a 3 minute constant stream of absolute energy with heavy synth tones and beat perfect chugging with the immense and vicious vocal range from frontman Garret Russel, I almost forget I was there to do a job and cover this as they’re so entrancing to watch with the bands constant control of the stage and marionette-esque movements of the aforementioned frontman.
They delivered a pristine but very sweaty performance playing classics such Panic Room and Trilogy, all the while taking time to show how appreciative they were to the legions of people there seeing them again, or discovering them for the first time.
Then was the main event, the heavy hitters in The Amity Affliction.
Opening with Pittsburgh from their 2014 album ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’ the crowd erupted into motion, I actually struggled to get a good view of them for most of this set just due to the sheer amount of movement. The Rock City crowd had reserves of energy saved specifically for this moment.
With the tour being named after their new album which released this April, a good chunk of the show was newer bangers, but they played a bit of everything for every era of fan.
Harsh vocalist and frontman Joel Birch used his stage riser until it was on the verge of collapsing to be front and centre for the roughly 2000 people in attendance. Whilst the other members perfectly controlled their sides of stage by reciting the lyrics back to the crowd whilst keeping their technical instrumentals in sync and giving the crowd back its energy tenfold.
From anthemic bangers to gut punching emotional journeys, I’d be shocked to find anybody that wouldn’t be impressed with their performance, along with the stellar lineup they brought on the road and around the world for this run.
Through hardships, member changes and all the inbetween the name of this tour and the album completely fits.
A House of Cards is built with your hands and can fall, but after seeing them conducting the crowd into a fluid motion of euphoria singing along to every word, I don’t see them toppling anytime soon.
