Review by KAREN MURPHY

“It was really humbling, working with all these super high-up producers, and at a well known studio in New York. You just kind of think to yourself ‘wow, we’re just this little band from Brisbane, Queensland in Australia’,” says THE AMITY AFFLICTION keyboardist, Trad Nathan of their new album ‘Youngbloods’, (released on July 12^th). “The recording process was drawn out over 2 months in New York so it isn’t really hectic; it was just a different process. We went over there with songs that we had written and demoed in Australia, in Brisbane. We got over there and did pre-production with Machine, our producer; he put his input into the songs, which changed everything. I guess if we had a smaller time schedule to record, it would have been more hectic, but it was okay, no-one was too stressed about anything.”

Taking a giant leap past the band’s hard-rock debut, ‘Severed Ties’—peaking at ARIA chart number 26 in 2008—‘Youngbloods’ has recently triumphed at ARIA chart number 6. “We had a big influence with new guitarist Clint Spattering,” Nathan says of the songwriting process. “He’s the guitarist that plays in THE GETAWAY PLAN. That’s been the main influence, I think.  I mean, we did split up the songwriting process this time; all went off on our own and wrote songs individually. That kind of changed everything anyway, but all-in-all it all kind of matured, I guess. No more cheesy songs.”

Formed in Gympie in regional Queensland, Nathan says the years haven’t made the writing process any easier. “We get a lot of disputes over songwriting,” he explains, “R [Ahren Stringer] is pretty strong-minded, he has to get his way a fair bit, but it wasn’t so bad. I mean, as I said, we went off onto our own paths and wrote songs individually this time, and then brought them in and worked on them as a band; we all get along. A lot of the titles for the songs actually refer to things we’d seen and done in New York. None of the song names are really serious, like they all are, but we just sat around in a group and came up with silly names for things we’d seen and done.”

However the electricity doesn’t stop there as the band are now heading to a state near you for their ‘Youngbloods’ national tour, which was kick-started with the launch party on July 12^th. “I’m looking forward to touring again,” Nathan says. “It’s been a while since we’ve been on a national tour. We have all of these new songs to play, people to hang out with, people to see. I’m just keen to see how the new songs go down live, really. The reception has been amazing.”

And the shows are well planned and rehearsed. “We don’t write anything we can’t perform live,” Nathan says. “That’s a big no-no. We can’t have kids rock up to a show, and not hear their favourite part of a song, it just doesn’t go down well. We wrote this album so that everything can be played live, we wouldn’t have done it any other way really.”

So it’s no wonder the fans go wild at their shows: “Our fans are just crazy in general. They come to live shows; they’re the most energetic crowd I’ve seen. Sometimes it gets a bit out of hand but you know…”

However, not all of those shows will get out of hand. With 11 of the 15 scheduled shows allowing access to under 18s there’s going to be a lot more authority hanging around to keep the crowd behaving. “The majority of our crowd is underage, and I know when I was growing up, if I wasn’t able to see one of my favourite bands, I’d be devastated. So we have to cater for our younger audience as well. We try and travel around as much as we can for them. On this tour we are doing some regionals between Sydney and Melbourne, which are happening for the kids that can’t get to the main cities. You have to cater for everyone, I know there are a lot of kids in small towns that want to see us play, so we have to cater for them as well, we can’t leave them out.”

If you want to catch Amity Affliction in concert, check out www.theamityaffliction.com.au to book tickets to a gig in a town near you. Looking to buy their album? Nathan had one last thing to say about that…

“It’s our best work, to date; we poured our heart and soul into this album.”