The Amity Affliction have ‘chucked a Swiftie’. As Taylor Swift did with her albums, The Amity Affliction have re-recorded their fourth album ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’ because their previous label Roadrunner Records, now owned by Warner Music, took “the vast majority of all revenue” leaving The Amity Affliction with fuck all.
Joel Birch of The Amity Affliction explains, “We re-recorded this album for a few reasons, but it would be foolish for me not to mention the more monumental of these, that being that our deal with our previous record label had them taking the vast majority of all revenue from what has been our most successful album until recently. When you spend over two decades in an industry you get to see how predatory it can be, and the main victims of this predation are young bands that are wined and dined into deals that all but guarantee the band will only make money for the label and not for themselves.
“This is what happened with us; we were never a group of people who were gunning to be massive or successful, we didn’t really look to the future at all, instead we were completely taken by the treatment we received and the promises that were made and only when it was far too late and we were far too far along in our contract to do anything about it.”
The Amity Affliction released four albums on Roadrunner Records, ‘Chasing Ghosts’ (2012), ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’ (2014), ‘This Could Be Heartbreak’ (2016) and ‘Misery’ (2018).
Heavy Metal and Hard Rock label Roadrunner Records started in the Netherlands in 1980. Warner Music Group purchased a majority shareholding (73.5%) making it the major shareholder of the business. In 2010 Warner bought out the remaining stock.
At the time of the acquisition, Warner said they would leave Roadrunner alone to maintain its brand but in 2012 made substantial staff cutbacks worldwide. Roadrunner employees referred to the acquisition as ‘The Red Wedding’ comparing it to the Game of Thrones episode ‘The Rains of Castamere’.
Warner shut Roadrunner offices in the UK, Australia and Canada and then the head office in the Netherlands.
Roadrunner acts then started to bail out. DevilDriver, Alter Bridge, Machine Head, Slipknot, Opeth and Slipknot are just some of the big names who jumped ship.
In 2018 Warner merged the once great metal label with its Elektra Music division and in 2022 plonked that into another entity 300 Elektra Entertainment, diluting the brand to non-existence.
It will be interesting to see of The Amity Affliction re-record their other three Roadrunner albums.
Taylor Swift was originally signed to indie label Big Machine, owned by former Dreamworks exec Scott Borchetta and country singer Toby Keith. Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun purchased the label in 2019 giving him ownership off Taylor’s catalogue so Taylor fucked him over and re-recorded her back catalogue which became the five albums known as ‘Taylor’s Version’.
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