The Amity Affliction have released their first single of the year, the touching ‘I See Dead People’.
The new song features the late New Zealand rapper Louie Knuxx, a close friend of the metalcore band who tragically passed away in 2021.
That’s why ‘I See Dead People’ is, according to frontman Joel Birch, intensely personal, with the lyrics detailing “the ongoing and nebulous struggle that comes with dealing with the pain of friends killing themselves, while myself dealing with passive suicidal ideation.”
Knuxx died in Melbourne while running at the age of 42 in 2021. The New Zealand hip hop artist had been living in the city for three years, and directed the Chin-Up Project, a primary intervention programme that works with at-risk youth.
‘I See Dead People’ is the follow-up to the heaving single ‘Show Me Your God’, which saw The Amity Affliction finish 2022 in battering style.
‘Show Me Your God’ was the first song taken from the band’s first self-produced record, and was just as personal as ‘I See Dead People’.
“The song is the first in a series of explorations and internal meditations on how our past shapes us and interacts with our various mental struggles in the present, drawing from both personal experience and also the trauma of close friends who have passed away or who have dealt with close loved ones passing away,” the band shared at the time.
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The Amity Affliction were typically busy last year, completing a sold-out national headline tour in support of their most recent album, 2020’s Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them, which reached number two on the ARIA Albums Chart that year.
They then performed at Good Things Festival in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane alongside the likes of Bring Me The Horizon, Deftones, Gojira and more.
The Amity Affliction’s ‘I See Dead People’ is out now.
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