The Amity Affliction are known for digging deep within to exhume moving and personal stories for their craft. And so upon first spin, their new single ‘Like Love’ could be clocked as another no-holds-barred pontification of the self that we’ve come to know and love from the band. In many ways it is, but ‘Like Love’ is also unlike anything we’ve heard from the band in the past, given it’s perhaps their most most moving, most gut-wrenching work to date.
‘Like Love’ is a devastating homage to The Amity Affliction’s fallen comrade, I Killed The Prom Queen and Deez Nuts bassist Sean Kennedy, whose passing sent deep shockwaves throughout the alternative community. ‘Like Love’ is a volatile sonic clash of good and evil; the light and the dark that is the duelling vocals from Joel Birch and Ahren Stringer cascading atop an instrumental of cyclonic drama, wailing riffage and cataclysmic beats.
No amount of slick production or colour grading could hide the sheer emotional weight of the song, and indeed it can be seen in the forlorn eyes put front and centre in the track’s music video, written and directed by Birch. It’s the first new tune from The Amity Affliction since 2020’s album Everyone Loves You…Once You Leave Them. Add to that their headline position at the forthcoming UNIFY Gathering, and a whole tour to flex new wares on come February, and we say chances for more new Amity on the horizon are pretty bloody good.
