Amyl and the Sniffers

A Balaclava share house and an EP made in twelve hours

Amyl and the Sniffers formed in 2016 in Balaclava, an inner-southern suburb of Melbourne, out of a share house rather than a scene. The founding story is repeated often because it is verifiable and short: the first EP, Giddy Up, was written, recorded and released inside twelve hours. Bassist Gus Romer joined in early 2017, completing the line-up of Amy Taylor on vocals, Declan Mehrtens on guitar and keyboards, Bryce Wilson on drums and Romer on bass, which has held ever since.

The early EPs were gathered as Big Attraction & Giddy Up, and the self-titled debut album arrived in 2019. It won the ARIA Award for Best Rock Album that year, which set the pattern for everything that followed: a band whose records are received as pub rock with punk delivery, and whose awards cabinet fills up faster than most people expect of a group that sounds this rough.

Three studio records, and the one that raised the ceiling

Comfort to Me, released in 2021, took the ARIA awards for Best Group and Best Rock Album in 2022, along with an AIR award for Best Independent Punk Album or EP. It is the record that turned festival slots into headline rooms, and much of its material is still load-bearing in the current set.

Cartoon Darkness, the third album, came out on 25 October 2024 through B2B Records and Virgin Music Group. Nick Launay produced it at Studio 606 and Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles; thirteen tracks, thirty-three minutes and forty-eight seconds. The singles rolled out across the year: 'U Should Not Be Doing That' on 21 May 2024, 'Chewing Gum' on 23 August, 'Big Dreams' on 25 September and 'Jerkin'' on 21 October. It reached number two on the Australian albums chart and number one on the UK Rock and Metal chart.

Reception was strong without being unanimous. The record holds a Metacritic average of 81 from published reviews; Clash and The Line of Best Fit both gave it nine out of ten, while Pitchfork sat at 6.8. Its subject matter is broader than the first two albums — the climate crisis, war, artificial intelligence, political drift — handled at the same speed rather than at a lower one.

The awards followed in bulk. At the 2025 ARIAs the album took Album of the Year, Best Group, Best Rock Album and Best Cover Art. It also won the AIR award for Independent Album of the Year and Rolling Stone Australia's Best LP/EP. Taylor has taken the APRA Song of the Year award in both 2025 and 2026, and Songwriter of the Year in 2026.

El Coyote: the country record

The most recent release is not a punk record at all. Truth or Consequence (Live from El Coyote) was recorded on 28 April 2025 at El Coyote, a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, with a room full of friends rather than a ticketed audience. The band played their own catalogue as country songs — stripped back, acoustic-leaning, loose — and filmed it on Kodak stock with John Angus Stewart, a regular collaborator and Taylor's fiancé, directing.

The film screened in cinemas across the UK, Ireland, Europe and Australia from late August 2026, reaching Australian screens on 28 August. The album followed on 4 September 2026 on vinyl and streaming. It carries two unreleased songs and a cover of Slim Dusty's 'Lights on the Hill'. Taylor had flagged the ambition in advance, telling Rolling Stone Australia she would love to make an Australian country album and naming Chad Morgan and Slim Dusty as reference points.

Reviewing the film, Rolling Stone Australia described it as an MTV Unplugged session relocated to a dive bar and given more drink, picking out 'Caltex Cowgirl' for the emotional weight it carries when slowed down, 'Bag of Cocaine' as a ribald singalong likely to survive into the live set, and the Slim Dusty cover for its plain sincerity. The buzz-saw guitars are absent; Taylor's presence is not. On the record's intent, she said the hope was that it be 'listened to as it was made, in a ruckus exclamation between a cherished group of friends.'

Standing in September 2026

'U Should Not Be Doing That' brought the band their first Grammy nomination, in the Best Rock Performance category at the 2026 awards. Around it, the touring has been stadium-adjacent: three shows supporting The Offspring in Brazil in March 2025, then a run of Australian dates opening for AC/DC on the Power Up tour across November and December 2025.

Their own 2026 headline year began in North America in June, opening at the RBC Amphitheatre in Toronto on 4 June, and continued through Place Bell in Montreal and across the eastern United States and Midwest. The European leg ran through August: a London date on the All Points East bill presented by Outbreak beneath Deftones, Forwards in Bristol over 29 and 30 August, and Rock en Seine at Saint-Cloud in the same stretch.

What is on sale now is an American October — eight dates, headline rooms threaded between both weekends of Austin City Limits. The run opens on 1 October at the Longhorn Backyard Amphitheater in Dallas, plays Austin City Limits across 2–4 October, then the Coca-Cola Roxy in Atlanta on 4 October, Red Hat Amphitheater in Raleigh on 5 October, Nashville on 6 October and the Fillmore in New Orleans on 8 October, before the festival's second weekend on 9–11 October. No fourth studio album has been announced.

The show as it runs now

The Toronto opener is the best-documented version of the current show. Doors at seven, Party Dozen on at seven, L7 at ten to eight, the headline set from nine until 10.25pm — eighty-five minutes, twenty-six songs, twenty-four in the main set and a two-song encore ending on 'GFY'.

It opens on 'Control' and does not slow for a while: 'It's Mine', 'U Should Not Be Doing That', 'Motorbike Song', 'Balaclava Lover Boogie', 'Guided by Angels', 'Chewing Gum'. The middle draws on all three albums and the early EPs — 'Security', 'Bailing on Me', 'Tiny Bikini', 'Big Dreams', 'Facts', 'Gacked on Anger' — before a closing stretch of 'Knifey', 'Some Mutts (Can't Be Muzzled)', 'Jerkin'' and 'Hertz'. Nothing from the country record has appeared in these sets.

Staging is minimal by arena standards; the movement comes from Taylor, who covered the full width of the Place Bell stage for the entire set, with mosh pits forming early and staying open. The one recurring complaint from reviewers is mundane and affectionate — the between-song talk is often unintelligible outside Australia, which is a shame given how funny it is. Party Dozen, the Sydney duo of drummer Jonathan Boulet and saxophonist Kirsty Tickle, who sings into her effects-loaded horn, open every date; L7 have been added to selected shows, playing Bricks Are Heavy material.