Former The Amity Affliction and Volumes Vocalists Form New Band Self Checkout
Ahren Stringer and Gus Farias team up to tackle addiction and mental health stigma through their "cosmic gumbo" of screaming, rapping, and melody, recording their debut tracks in Mexico City.
Former The Amity Affliction singer/bassist Ahren Stringer and former Volumes singer Yung Yogi (former Gus Farias) joined together to form a new band called Self Checkout. Both musicians have been open about their drug abuse issues and emotional demons, and both were pushed out of their previous bands in tense situations - Farias was dismissed from Volumes in 2019, while Stringer states he was "kicked out" of The Amity Affliction earlier this year.
In a recent interview with Blunt, Stringer described how their experience brought them together to work on this collaboration. The new piece will explore themes of rising above personal vices and recovery, and the stigma of mental illness and addiction. Farias described his own personal experience with the work and said "[Suicide has] affected my life very deeply, and I want to share that. I'm sort of healing sharing that with the world."
The duo have been busy in Mexico City, creating what they describe as a "cosmic gumbo" of screaming, rapping, melody and more. They already have two finished songs under their belt, with a few more in the works. Stringer also mentioned that he has 13 tracks from an abandoned solo album in his pocket.
Despite their public struggles, Stringer expressed gratitude for the fans who've stuck by them: "Thank you for sticking by me. I can't wait to show you... because you're gonna love it. I know we both have a very bad reputation... because we're like, admitted addicts, everyone thinks we're just like POS, but you're gonna see that we're not. We're gonna prove the world wrong. And we want to thank you guys for sticking with us and we hope you love what we've produced. It's gonna be fire."
