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amityaffliction chasingghosts
Artist: The Amity Affliction
Title: Chasing Ghosts
Genre: Melocore
Release Date: 28th September 2012
Label: Roadrunner Records


Album Review

Australian band, THE AMITY AFFLICTION, was formed about ten years ago. Their new album ‘Chasing Ghosts’ is their third. The original cover of the album has shown a preoccupation with suicide and indeed even the band title has been chosen following a death of a close friend of the band members, so chosing subjects close to death may not come as a surprise. Somehow this version gets a clean out of the hanged body and only the wood remains.

As it has been for me before with their music, I struggle with the pop-rock candy of it, it’s just prettifying something that would have been better a lot more raw, a lot more gritty... Maybe I’m just not a big fan of “accessibility”. The screamed and angry parts are just so damn lot more interesting as a more technically heavy ‘R.I.P Bon’  where the prettifying doesn’t grate so much and the melodic approach comes off as interesting rather than cheesy, though such moments can still be found there. The same goes for ‘Bondi St. Blues’, where the harder core manages to push the poppy elements into the background. Maybe it was just a bit too much of a boy-band texture of Stringer’s vocals, but ‘Open Letter’ brings more sticky gooey clichés even with lyrics. With a subject that they raise, why drown it in this...? I could relate to it, but I just can’t. Well, it would appeal to a teenager, but if you want to hear something more mature, this just doesn’t seem to fit the bill.

The hype that surrounds them doesn’t seem to be justified, in my eyes, if you’re a veteran on the fields of music I really doubt you’d say there’s much of the inventive, much to pine about in regards of them being different from the plethora of bands of this genre. If you’re a newcomer you may be seduced by it, exactly by it hovering between the hard and soft territory and radio-friendly songs that manage to have a bit of a harder edge.


Tracklist

01. Chasing Ghosts
02. Life Underground
03. R.I.P Bon
04. Open Letter
05. Greens Avenue
06. I Heart HC
07. Flowerbomb
08. Pabst Blue Ribbon on Ice
09. Geof Sucks 666
10. Bondi St. Blues


Line-up

Joel Birch – vocals
Ahren Stringer – bass, clean vocals
Trad Nathan – keyboards
Troy Brady – guitar
Ryan Burt – drums


Websites

http://www.myspace.com/theamityaffliction


Cover Picture

amityaffliction chasingghosts


Rating

Music: 6
Sound: 6
Total: 6 / 10





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