The Amity Affliction - Misery

Okay, so I know I’m supposed to be on a bit of a self-imposed break right now for about two more weeks, but the pile-up of albums I’ve been wanting to talk about has just been growing more and more daunting by the week. Even with all the deep listening I’ve had with the most stimulating (and challenging) albums on my itinerary, it’s still going to be a massive challenge getting as caught up as I’d like to be on all the discussions about those albums. To at least put a dent in that workload, I’ve just done a few posts about the ones I feel are the easiest/quickest to talk about, and this new album from The Amity Affliction is another one of those that I feel will go very quickly. And it’s not necessarily just because it’s simplistic or generic or dumb or so atrocious it’s not worth more than a fiery berating. It’s not really any of those things in an overwhelming sense. It reminds me a lot of Escape the Fate’s new album earlier this year. It’s just not really for me. Nevertheless, I felt it was a significant enough release that I should at least give it an honest try and my honest thoughts on it.

Like Escape the Fate, I am not at all a close follower of The Amity Affliction, and I couldn’t tell you what they’ve been up to for the past few years leading up to this album. And while I do value the importance of addressing the context surrounding an album (see my gargantuan posts about Otep’s, Machine Head’s, Suicide Silence’s, and Deafheaven’s latest efforts), I didn’t really hear anything lyrically or conceptually intriguing to spur me to do any deep research, enough to give me significant confidence that I could skip that step and still come through with about the same opinion on the album. 

(Again, this is a quickie, and I’m just trying to shorten my to-do list in the places where it’s easiest while I have a lot of other pressing matters. I know that sounds very cold and probably like I don’t care enough to put the effort in. But I’m just going to be tackling the album authentically: as a non-fan revisiting this band to see what’s new. I’m not here to pretend I’m well-versed in The Amity Affliction’s career and compare this to their older stuff. I simply don’t have to time to re-listen to all their shit; I’m just one boy, and I am still a happy metal boy. And like I said, I’m pretty sure a history lesson isn’t going to change my mind about what I heard. If there is somehow some huge contextual puzzle piece to this album that just dramatically changes the way this album should be heard, by all means, let me know. But I highly doubt it. Plus, who’s really reading this anyway? Does it matter? Do I matter? Do my thoughts matter? Does music matter? It’s just music. If you’re reading this, hi, I’m chill, I’m just rambling. Should I stop?)

Okay, so I don’t really like this album, but I didn’t really expect to simply because I’ve never really been a fan of the brand of melodic post-hardcore that bands like The Amity Affliction have purveyed. The Blink-182 vocal style mixed with some shouty metalcore growls over semi-poppy instrumentation (and now electronic supplementation) has never really been my cup of tea. I said the same thing about Escape the Fate’s recent album, yet, after listening to it, I couldn’t tear into it like I have with albums I actually expected more from (Bullet for My Valentine, Volbeat). Even though it surely wasn’t for me, I had to respect Escape the Fate for the clear proficiency they displayed with the style on that album.

Unfortunately, I don’t really feel the same obligatory respect is due to Misery. Even though I haven’t really listened to too many complete post-hardcore albums in my life (certainly not recently), I still felt like this album wasn’t providing anything new or exciting to the subgenre, and it felt like I had heard everything on this album 10 years ago while trying to get in and out of Hot Topic for a Metallica shirt as fast as possible. While the album has a new electronic flair that I definitely didn’t hear in the scene’s earlier years, I didn’t find it to be anything beyond bells and whistles to give the album the appearance of trying something ambitious. The integration of these electronic elements didn’t ever really seem to push the band’s or the genre’s stylistic boundaries or even much in the way of new structural ideas except for maybe the interrupted choruses of “Feels Like I’m Dying”. The electronics just feel like sprinkles on the same frosting on the same cake. As for the compositions themselves, the only song on the album I that felt like the band applied their style well to was “Black Cloud” (and I can kind of appreciate the spelling bee lyrical approach on “D.I.E.” at least breaking up the monotony of the album a little bit), but the rest of the album is pretty by-the-numbers for this genre and if it sounds tired to me, I’m sure others who are more into this style find it bland too.

I wasn’t hoping for much from this album, just maybe another album like Escape the Fate’s that would compound my appreciation for what the bands in this scene are doing even though it’s not my style. Misery, however, only reaffirms why I don’t pay much attention to and why I’ve never tried to hard to get into this subgenre. Again, I’m not going to put it in the same category I put Bullet for My Valentine’s Gravity and Ministry’s AmeriKKKant into. Those albums have the ingredients to make a musical dish in a style I regularly enjoy, and those bands fucked those dishes up. Man, I feel like my year-end list of least favorite albums is gonna be pretty predictable this year. But most likely, Misery won’t be there.