With just weeks to go until the release of their new album House of Cards, The Amity Affliction have shared another taste with the new single “Heaven Sent”.
“Heaven Sent” takes the listener back into a personal memory frontman Joel Birch found himself revisiting during the songwriting process: the impact of trauma experienced as a young person, the way it can shape us in good ways and bad, and the choices people make in navigating their way through such times in pursuit of peace.
As he explained: ““This is one of the darker songs on the album, the first line references one of a handful of memories I have from when I was really young and my step father still smoked. He put his cigarette out on my arm at a party and then played it off as an accident, my mother was busy getting drunk and brushed it off and told me to keep it moving, basically.
“The rest of the song is a snapshot of my home life in some ways and the way the abuse was cyclical in nature and always prefaced by or followed by ‘I love you’ which obviously creates some strange and unhealthy ways for a young person to understand their relationship to a parent.”
Check out the lyric video below.
Arriving via Pure Noise Records on April 24th, the long-awaited new studio album is set to reaffirm the band’s status as one of heavy music’s most dynamic groups. It is the first to feature Jonny Reeves, who became a permanent addition to the lineup last year. He replaced Ahren Stringer, who the band parted ways with in February last year.
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Despite the very public departure, a new report earlier this month suggested Stringer is still tied to the band. Corporate filings showed the company behind The Amity Affliction entered a formal restructuring process last year to manage almost $650,000 in debt, meaning Stringer remains a co-owner and director. It’s reported that the company owed $646,000 in debt, with the majority owed to the Australian Taxation office. The band reportedly entered a formal plan to repay around $512,000 over three years.
Stringer went on to launch new band Self Checkout but was hospitalised in September 2025 in what the group described as a “serious and unexpected emergency”. He recently spoke out about his departure, opening up about the role that addiction and alcohol played.
“Heaven Sent” follows other recent releases including the title track, which was penned by Birch for his brother and sister (and himself), taking stock of the relationship shared with their mother, and “Bleed”, described as a “fuck you to people online”. The track comes following The Amity Affliction’s 21 date regional tour with favourites In Hearts Wake and Redhook, which wrapped up last month.
The APRA Award nominated band have also been announced as part of the Hellbound II heavy metal cruise in 2027, where they will perform alongside heavyweights including Parkway Drive, Alpha Wolf, I Killed the Prom Queen, and Thy Art is Murder.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ recently sat down with Birch to discuss the weight of loss, the psychic toll of life online, and why the new record finally feels like a return home.
“I think that me and Dan [Brown] were on the same page for this one where we just wanted to do what people love about the band,” Birch said of the songwriting process for House of Cards. “And I mean, that’s just screaming and a big chorus. It’s what we’ve done forever. We just wanted to make sure they were good ones.” Read the full interview here.
The Amity Affliction’s “Heaven Sent” is out now.
