The Amity Affliction Return to London for the House of Cards Tour

Photos by Tom Ise

There was something almost cruelly fitting about spending a Sunday evening screaming along to songs about pain, grief and survival. For a band like The Amity Affliction, misery has always been the language people have used to feel a little less alone. Returning to the O2 Forum Kentish Town for their House of Cards European tour, the Australian metalcore veterans brought a set that balanced a new chapter in their career with the songs that made so many of us fall in love with them.

This marked my fourth time seeing The Amity Affliction, and I was curious to see how their latest material sat alongside a catalogue that had become so personal to so many listeners. I was equally excited about the support bill: Orthodox, Varials and Silent Planet offered three different shades of heaviness before the headliners. I was in for a full evening of heavy riffs, emotional damage and probably a few sore necks the following morning.

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Orthodox

Orthodox opened the evening with the kind of sound that makes standing still feel like a waste of time. Their sound leans into the uglier, more confrontational side of heavy music, built around dissonance, low-tuned guitars and breakdowns that seemed determined to knock the wind out of the room. There was no gentle introduction here; they went straight for the throat.

Although the room was still filling up, people were already going mad in the middle of the pit, trying to manage the impact of tracks like ‘Sacred Place’, ‘One Less Body’ and ‘Keep Your Blessings’. Rather than relying on melody to soften that impact, the American band used tension and abrupt changes in momentum to keep their music unsettling.

I always appreciated openers who don’t feel the need to make themselves particularly accessible, and Orthodox certainly weren’t interested in playing it safe. They set the tone nicely, leaving the room ready for things to get even heavier.

Varials

Having seen Varials once before, I was particularly excited to catch them again. With Cell vocalist Skyler Conder now fronting the band alongside bassist Mike Foley, drummer Sean Rauchut and guitarist Shane Lyons, they brought a fresh chapter to their already punishing sound.

Their riffs hit with a blunt physicality, while the breakdowns had that wonderfully ridiculous quality that made me pull the most offended face imaginable. The setlist centred on Where the Light Leaves, the Philadelphia band’s latest album, which combines their familiar aggression with some more pronounced melodic textures.

‘Blissful End’ and ‘The Hurt Chamber’ showed how the newer material fit into their sound without sacrificing its rawness. Conder’s arrival also gives the band an opportunity to establish their own identity, rather than simply recreate what came before. I was interested to see how that transition would work live, and the set made a convincing case for this next chapter.

Still, the biggest reactions came when Varials returned to older material, including ‘Anything to Numb’ and ‘Empire of Dirt’. The latter became an even bigger moment when Orthodox vocalist Adam Easterling and Pintglass vocalist Ben Mason joined them on stage. That was when things in the pit really kicked off. People ran into each other, crowdsurfers made their way towards the barrier, and the room descended into a beautiful chaos. It reminded everyone that Varials can hold their own against any band on the bill.

Silent Planet

Silent Planet brought a completely different energy to the evening. Their approach to metalcore has always felt particularly compelling because they combine technical precision with atmosphere and lyrical depth, often exploring difficult personal and social subjects without losing the physical impact of their music.

Frontman Garrett Russell remains a fascinating figure to watch, with a performance that feels like an extension of the music’s emotional content. Meanwhile, the interplay between guitarist Mitchell Stark, bassist Nick Pocock and drummer Alex Camarena gave the songs their restless character, preventing even the more atmospheric passages from feeling static.

Tracks such as ‘Antimatter’ and ‘Panic Room’ showed why this band has become such an interesting name in modern metalcore. They could move from intricate, almost hypnotic passages into moments of outright chaos without making the transitions feel forced.

The crowd-surfing was particularly relentless. At one point, so many people were making their way over the barrier that Russell thanked the security team for catching everyone. It was a small moment, but one that captured the collective energy in the room, and the people working hard to keep everyone safe while the rest of us got carried away.

What I appreciated most about Silent Planet last night was how they expanded the evening’s definition of heaviness. Their music can be cerebral without feeling cold, and chaotic without losing its direction. They added another dimension to an evening that might otherwise have risked becoming an exercise in sheer volume.

The Amity Affliction

By the time The Amity Affliction took over, the evening had already offered three distinct interpretations of heaviness. But there was something comforting about returning to a band whose music had been around for so many different stages of my life. Their songs had always been particularly good at putting difficult emotions into words, even when those words come wrapped in riffs heavy enough to shake the room.

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The biggest talking point going into this era is the lineup change. Jonny Reeves took over clean vocals and bass after Ahren Stringer‘s departure, joining Joel Birch on harsh vocals and Dan Brown on guitar, while Joe Longobardi also left the band last June. That’s a significant change for a band whose identity had been shaped for years by the contrast between Birch‘s screams and Stringer‘s clean singing.

I was curious to see how that dynamic translated to the newer material from House of Cards. The album marked a new chapter for the band, but the challenge is always making that change feel natural while keeping the emotional connection that made their older songs so important to fans.

Opening with ‘Pittsburgh’ immediately connected the newer era to Let the Ocean Take Me, one of the records that helped cement the band’s place in modern metalcore. Its emotional weight comes from the contrast between the verses’ harshness and the chorus’s melodic release. It works particularly well live because its vulnerability never comes at the expense of its heaviness.

‘Drag the Lake’ offered another reminder of how effectively the band can turn bleak subject matter into something communal, while ‘All My Friends Are Dead’ brought a different kind of frustration into the mix. Both fitted naturally alongside the newer songs, showing how consistently the band had returned to difficult emotions throughout their career.

The newer material also helped keep the set from becoming a nostalgia trip. A band with such a recognisable catalogue can easily fall into the trap of treating new songs as interruptions between older favourites. But tracks like ‘Bleed’, ‘Heaven Sent’ and the title track ‘House of Cards’ deserved — and found — room to stand on their own, particularly given the changes in the band’s line-up and vocal dynamic. The inclusion of ‘Afterlife’ and ‘All Fucked Up’ also represented a different point in their evolution.

One of the most memorable details was the audience choice between ‘Chasing Ghosts’ and ‘Open Letter’. The former won, so it wasn’t just like turning up to hear a list of songs; people had opinions about what they wanted to hear, and the band gave them a say. That connection was really what the whole evening was about. Music that can feel incredibly lonely through headphones suddenly had an entire room behind it.

The closing stretch, featuring ‘All That I Remember’ and ‘Death’s Hand’ before ‘Soak Me in Bleach’ brought the set to an end, balanced the band’s newer direction with the familiar intensity that defined their earlier work. One thing their setlist made clear was that they haven’t abandoned the songs that first brought people into their world.

And that mattered to me. I didn’t need them to recreate an experience I’d already had before. I wanted to see how the band had moved forward, how the newer material sat alongside the older songs, and whether the emotional connection that made their music so important to me still held up.

The support bill also made the evening feel particularly well-rounded. Orthodox brought the ugliness, Varials brought the groove, and Silent Planet brought the atmosphere, leaving The Amity Affliction to tie the night together with their particular mixture of heaviness and heartbreak.

For me, what makes live music worth coming back to isn’t always about being surprised by something completely new. Sometimes, it’s about hearing a song you’d known for years and realising that it still hits the same nerve.

And if there’s one thing The Amity Affliction have always been good at, it’s making you feel your feelings — preferably at an unnecessarily high volume.