Concert Review: The Amity Affliction @ De Melkweg, Amsterdam

The evening continued with an all-destructive set from Hardcore band Stray From The Path coming from Long Island, New York. Stray From The Path’s music is mostly drivven by political happenings in the U.S. 
Needless to say 2016 has been a year filled with new topics to write songs about on an upcoming record.
On Election Day, the band released a new track titled ‘The House Always Wins’.
That track, among many others taken from older records, made sure of the most intense set of the evening.
Massive amounts of crowdsurfers, whirling moshpits and many fans blurting out the lyrics from the politically charged anthems such as ‘Badge & A Bullet’, ‘The House Always Wins’ and ‘Outbreak’.
The performance was tight as could be and the band & audience were one.
We cannot wait for Stray From The Path to come back as headliner.

Next up was the more melodic metal band Northlane.
Northlane have made several stops in The Netherlands in the last year and have been paving the way for bigger and greater things with new frontman Marcus Bridge.
Two years ago, we saw Northlane opening for Parkway Drive when they very recently joined forces with Bridge.
At this point, the band’s frontman was very timid and holding back.
Two years later, Bridge doesn’t hold anything back anymore.
Dance moves, jumping around, Bridge surely brought his A-game over the last couple of years and it shows.
Northlane’s set was a proper combination of older tracks such as ‘Dispossesion’ & ‘Quantum Flux’, aswell as latest single ‘Rot’, a massive powerhouse taken from the band’s latest record ‘Node’.
The crowd adjusted to the new frontman and was once again unstoppable.
Not as much as with Stray From The Path, but given the energy they must’ve drained, that was no surprise.
Northlane aswell puts on one hell of a show. Lights adjusting to the song’s atmosphere smoothly, fog to empower the mysterious vibe that Northlane so perfectly carries and an all-round breathtaking performance of all the musicians involved. As stated before, Northlane are destined to move forward quite rapidly. Keep an eye out for their upcoming record.

It feels like we’ve been in the venue for just ten minutes when it was already time for headliner The Amity Affliction.
Man, where did the time go. The support acts have done such a killer job with their destructive sets, The Amity Affliction could not have wished for a better warmed up crowd.
The Amity Affliction came to support the release of their latest album ‘This Could Be Heartbreak’, which released earlier this year via UNFD and they’ve come to do just that.
Their set was a mixture of a lot of tracks from their latest two albums ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’ and ‘This Could Be Heartbreak’, which did not come as a surprise, as ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’ was a massive release and still carries many favourites such as ‘Pittsburgh’ and ‘Don’t Lean On Me’.
Opening track was ‘I Bring The Weather For Me’.
The band emerged onto the stage under an eardeafening cheering from an almost sold out crowd of give or take 650 people.
The Amity Affliction’s energy level, stagewise aswell as musicwise has been slightly lower than the acts they’ve brought along for this massive tour, but they made up for it with their anthemic tracks which everyone knew the lyrics to.

I was very pleased to hear the first notes of slightly older track ‘Open Letter’ as second track, as it seems that the band has moved on from that era of the band with a setlist consisting of tracks only from their latest two albums if it wasn’t for ‘Open Letter’. Luckily, a lot of the fans agreed with me and the moshpit was as big as ever.
A special shoutout must be given to the way The Amity Affliction delivers their breakdowns to the crowd.
The breakdowns itself are quite generic, a formula that has been done a thousand times, but with Ahren Stringer’s grunting simultaneously with the instrumental aspects of the breakdown, gives for that extra bit of power that makes The Amity Affliction stand out.
This phenomena did exceptionally well with the legendary breakdown from ‘Death’s Hand’ (‘Hey Death. Get Fucked!)
The Australian band took a step back with their slower track ‘All Fucked Up’, a track similar to no other track from the band. 
The emotion poured through Ahren Stringer’s absolutely stunning clean vocals, aswell as Birch’s desperate screams in between. The band could not have done a better job at delivering this track.