Real Live Wires: Amyl and the Sniffers

Marrickville Bowling Club, Sydney, September 19th, 2019. Amy Taylor, lead singer of Melbourne four-piece punk-rock band Amyl and the Sniffers, is crowd surfing upside down, her boots pointing skyward.

She finds her footing on the ceiling, walks across to a large disco ball and gives it an almighty kick. Shards of light ricochet across the packed, sweat-soaked crowd of about 400, including someone — perhaps sensibly — wearing a helmet. On stage, the mullet-sporting Sniffers — guitarist Declan Mehrtens, bassist Gus Romer, and drummer Bryce Wilson — soundtrack the moment by making an unhinged racket. The assembled punters, understandably, absolutely lose their shit. 

“Where the ladies at?” asks Taylor once back on stage, the entire audience completely in thrall to her. “Remember who’s boss, fellas.”

Seeing Amyl and the Sniffers live for the first time is not something you forget in a hurry. That largely comes down to the diminutive, combustible Taylor, whose performance style is akin to stuffing a factory’s worth of fireworks into a hatchback car and tossing a lit match in the window (“I’ve got plenty of energy/It’s my currency” she accurately states on 2021 single “Guided by Angels”). You could debate what attributes make a “true rock star” until Keith Richards kicks the bucket, but exposure to Taylor on stage leaves you in no doubt that you’re in the presence of one. 

Andrew Parisi, co-manager of the band along with Simone Ubaldi — the pair also operate live music venues The Croxton Bandroom and Croxton Front Bar in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury — remembers the first time he and Ubaldi saw the band play their second-ever show in the smaller Front Bar in March 2017. 

“We had the Dune Rats playing three nights in a row in the main room, and [Amyl and the Sniffers] were like the midnight dive band that were playing after them in the front bar,” Parisi recalls. “Me and Simone were walking out to go home, and we just saw this person spinning around on the ground, doing cartwheels. It was just this visceral kind of realness — you cannot fake that shit. 

“At another small show in 2018, she was standing on a table, and she waited for the perfect moment and then threw a jug of beer into the ceiling fan above her head and it sprayed the entire crowd. A friend turned to me and said, ‘I think we have the new Iggy Pop’. I said, ‘Mate, no, she’s Amy Taylor — she’s not Iggy Pop.’ Amy is a superstar, there’s no question about it.”

Parisi points out the exact spot he saw Taylor spin on the carpet like a Catherine wheel as he leads me on a tour of The Croxton Front Bar and Bandroom, the legendary live venues that played host to the likes of AC/DC, Cold Chisel and INXS in the Seventies and Eighties. Four decades later, Amyl and the Sniffers proudly call The Croxton their “home ground.” We make our way to the adjoining pub and bistro where a wooden partition sits in the corner, obscuring one of Australia’s hottest bands from the oblivious patrons digging into a pub lunch. 

On the other side I’m met not with the fierce, feral stage persona ‘Amyl’, but the low-key, warm, and exceptionally friendly Taylor, who’s seated with the even more low-key Wilson (possibly due to being stoned, which he confesses to with a sheepish grin about an hour later after not talking much). Ciggie break over, we’re soon joined by Mehrtens (amazing hair; Seventies disco lothario styling) and Romer (scrappy T-shirt, shorts and baseball cap, scuzzy punk rocker to the core). Taylor hands an excited Romer a plastic hamburger — something he collects — as a belated birthday gift. 

Although she was clearly born for the stage, I ask Taylor how she transitioned from music fan to arguably Australia’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll frontperson. 

“I feel like there were lots of moments where I was like, ‘Live music is the sickest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’” she enthuses. “Growing up, if I went to shows in my local area [Taylor grew up in Northern NSW hippie enclave Mullumbimby], I would never really see women on stage. But then I’d watch the guys and be like, ‘I can definitely do it better than them.’ And then when I moved to Melbourne, I was just going to live music five nights a week, and after a while I’d freestyle rap over fucking garage-funk or whatever. That was the first performing [I did], and I really liked it and wanted to do more.” Taylor recalls “pacing up and down the verandah as a kid, trying to learn Notorious B.I.G. and Eminem.” 

As the hot chips and drinks arrive, the quartet trade jokes and jibes like siblings at a family reunion. There’s a good reason for the ‘thick as thieves’ vibe: they’ve all lived together in various configurations over the years (diplomatically, no one’s game to say who the worst housemate is, although Taylor offers “it was probably me” ), with the band’s debut EP, Giddy Up, written, recorded, and released over a 12-hour period while they were house sharing in 2016. The last time they were all under the one roof was towards the end of 2019, the same period the band won the Best Rock Album ARIA Award for their blistering self-titled debut album. 

Amyl and the Sniffers

“It seemed like a great idea at the time,” says Mehrtens, grinning. “It was so that when we weren’t on tour we’d all have a place, the band could pay for it, and then next thing…” “Lockdown,” chimes in Taylor. “I think it was worse for the boys, because I’m like, ‘Let’s write now, let’s write every day!’ and they’d just be like, ‘We want to play PlayStation.’ It was good though ‘cos you work out everyone’s shit, so you don’t have to do that on the road. You already know exactly what everyone likes and doesn’t like.” I ask Taylor if she’s the motivator in the band. “‘Motivator’ is a different kind of word…” ponders Mehrtens. “Yeah, dictator maybe,” adds Taylor to knowing laughs from her bandmates.  

Not to let a pandemic get in the way of forward momentum, and in the true spirit of punk-rock, the band undertook a clandestine mission to rehearse for their second album in a suburban Melbourne storage shed. 

“That’s where we wrote [2021 second album] Comfort to Me,” says Taylor. “‘Cos we were all living together, we’d walk two by two to the storage shed so we wouldn’t get busted.”

Around this time, Taylor says she was living in a ramshackle shed in the backyard of the band’s shared house, but soon moved out for quite understandable reasons: “A big albino cockroach fell from the roof — it had no shell and was translucent. That was my last straw.”

The rough living and sneak rehearsals paid off: Comfort to Me debuted at Number Two on the ARIA Charts in September 2021, and went on to win Best Group and Best Rock Album ARIA Awards. Not a bad result for a band whose members only a few years prior were unemployed (Romer), working in the ‘scoop and weigh’ fruit and nut section at Coles supermarket (Taylor), and getting into an on-stage punch-up with each other that resulted in a lifetime ban from a pub (Mehrtens and Wilson, before the latter joined the band, although clearly no bad blood remains between the pair). 

Amyl and the Sniffers

Fast forward to 2025. 

Amyl and the Sniffers’ third album Cartoon Darkness debuted at Number Two on the ARIA Charts in October 2024, although it would’ve hit Number One if not for the surprise release of Tyler, the Creator’s album Chromakopia. Incredibly, Australia was a few hundred copies shy of having an album debut in the top spot with the none-more-Amy Taylor, conservative-baiting opening lyrics, “You’re a dumb cunt.” Parisi says that the none-more-Aussie swear word, as you’d expect, doesn’t go down well in the US. “‘Cunt’ is such a taboo word in America,” he says. “I find it bizarre that you can go and buy a gun in that country, but if you say the word ‘cunt’, it’s [unacceptable]. I remember sitting with our American label, and we were talking about ‘Jerkin’’ coming up as a single, and I said ‘Look, word of warning, it’s pretty [explicit].’ And I remember one of the girls at the label just went, ‘I really have a problem with that word.’ And it’s just like, ‘It’s what it is.’”  

The band have become a serious international concern, having made inroads in both the US (they scored Best Punk/Emo album at the American Association of Independent Music Libera Awards in 2020 and were nominated for more gongs in 2022; they also supported the Foo Fighters on a series of US stadium shows last year) and the UK (Cartoon Darkness debuted in the Official UK Albums Chart Top Ten, and they’ve been nominated for an International Group of the Year BRIT Award).

Parisi: “The English love it. I think it’s really funny ‘cos initially they sort of looked down on us, because we’re the colony. So at first it was like, ‘Oh my God, look at these absolute rednecks from the backwaters of Australia.’ But, you know, guess who’s having the last laugh.” 

Alex Bruford of ATC Live is Amyl and the Sniffers’ global co-booking agent (excluding Australia and North America) along with Will Church; the pair’s other clients include Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, and Fontaines D.C. Bruford says that demand for the band has skyrocketed since the release of Cartoon Darkness. “The UK/EU tour completely sold out, including three nights at The Roundhouse. We’ve added a show at Alexandra Palace, meaning the band will sell 20,000 tickets in London alone on this record,” he says. When asked where the ceiling is for the band, Bruford says there isn’t one. “Their last two albums have so many universal anthems. Being nominated for the BRIT Awards and mainstream radio play reflects their appeal to the masses, but they’ve done it all without compromising an inch on their music or politics,” he says. “Watching the band play at The Roundhouse, it was crystal clear that their audience is only going to continue growing. Amy is one of the all-time great front-people and reaches a level of connection with the crowd that few achieve.” 

Cartoon Darkness was recorded for “mates rates” at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in LA with producer Nick Launay (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, IDLES, and Silverchair albums are among his many credits). 

“It’s a cool place — you walk in and there’s a Nirvana gold record on the wall, and there’s the Neve console that Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumours on, and there’s hundreds of guitars,” says Mehrtens. “[Minor Threat and Fugazi frontman] Ian MacKaye even rocked up one day.” “That was fucking sick!” says Taylor excitedly. “I’ve never been starstruck ‘cos I don’t really give a shit, but when he walked in I was like… be cool.” 

Although they spend most of their time on the road, Taylor and Mehrtens have relocated to Los Angeles, where the latter admits they’ve done some “pretty LA shit.” (Taylor: “We’ve got thick accents, so sometimes people here are like, ‘What the fuck is she saying?’”)

“Me and Amy, we did the IV [multi-vitamin intravenous drip] thing, and I remember plugging that in and thinking, ‘This is the moment where there becomes a massive difference between me and my mates back home,’” laughs Mehrtens. “It’s all fuckin’ green smoothies with these cunts,” quips Romer. “I’m at McDonalds, and they’re drinking green smoothies.” 

While they’re not quite the World’s Cleanest Band yet (“I could work at Dyson — they could study me and make a prototype out of these nostrils. ‘How the hell does he do it?’” jokes Mehrtens to uproarious laughter from his bandmates), the foursome are quick to sing the praises of pickle juice shots as a sure-fire cure for cramps (and hangovers, says Taylor) while on the road. 

Amyl and the Sniffers

Being (somewhat) healthy seems a prescient move: the band’s intensive world tour, which kicks off this March and lasts for over six months, will see them play 50 dates across the UK, US, and Europe (including Australian dates and a few others, the total gig tally for 2025 currently sits at 85).

“We don’t really live anywhere, we’re all pretty nomadic,” says Taylor. “Even though these two [Romer and Wilson] live in Melbourne, it’s really not that much time that anybody gets to spend in their home. So even though me and Declan live in LA, realistically we’ll probably only spend one week there every two months this year.”

Save for the pandemic period, the band have been touring non-stop since 2019, playing 110 shows in 2023 alone. Taylor says it’s the only life the band know: “I wouldn’t know what it would be like to stay in a place for longer than three months.”

“I hate being at home,” confesses Mehrtens. “We’ve got this app called Master Tour, and it tells you what your day’s going to be almost every hour of the day. And I miss it so much when I’m at home. I just wake up and I feel like I’m a Sim that doesn’t have its person at the computer. I’m like, ‘What do I want for breakfast?’ When you’re on tour you have very limited things you can choose from each day.” Taylor: “What do they say? Anxiety is the dizziness of choice?”

Asking the band if they have any outlets to stay sane while spending so much time on the road leads to a rapid-fire exchange that perfectly encapsulates the band’s piss-taking, best-mates dynamic:

Romer: “Drinking is an outlet. Playing is, big time for me. I love it. I go on TikTok quite a bit.”

Mehrtens: “Isn’t that stopping you from going sane?”

Taylor: “Do you know what your screen time is?”

Romer: “Oh, I would never look. I would never, never look. I don’t need to know that information.”

Wilson: “Can we look?” 

Romer: “No, because you’ll just go, ‘Ohhhhhhh! That’s fucked up!’”

Mehrtens: “This motherfucker. We just spent a week in Sydney, and he ate so much McDonalds.” 

Taylor: “I would love to know your biological age.” 

Romer: “My insides are fine, don’t worry.” 

Taylor: “He goes there twice a day.” 

Romer: That was years ago, Taylor! It’s once a day now!”

Taylor: “To answer your question, you can’t stay sane, that’s the paradox. We all love playing live though — I’ve got my make-up and hair, which I love to do. I also work out and read books like I’m in prison mode.”

Wilson: “I like to exercise, watch footy.” 

Romer: “Declan goes to, like, fuckin’ where Freddie Mercury was born, shit like that.” 

Mehrtens: “I’m a monument and attraction guy. I like to get my steps in.” 

Taylor: “Declan is made for the road, he just loves it. He needs to learn to stay sane off tour, which is trouble in its own way. But me, I don’t want to do many more than 85 shows ‘cos it’s so physically hectic for me. It’s more just me joints and ankles and hips.” 

Wilson: [grandma voice] “It’s me joints and me ankles and me hips!” 

Regardless of the band’s sanity — or lack thereof — while they travel across the globe in 2025, one thing fans won’t see is the band in a pre-show huddle, reciting positive affirmations before they hit the stage. 

“Fuck that! I think it’s weird when you see people doing a prayer and shit before, it’s like, fuck off!” says Romer incredulously. “We’re just like, ‘Let’s go fuck this shit up.’” 

Amyl and the Sniffers

The Croxton Bandroom, Thornbury, January 14th, 2025.

Amyl and the Sniffers are on stage for a tour rehearsal, and while not quite fucking shit up — you never go full pelt during a practice run — their fiery dynamic simmers close to the surface. Taylor prowls the stage, but never lets herself go fully off the leash — she has to be careful with her voice after having a cyst removed a few years ago, and there’s no need to spend that currency of hers unnecessarily.

The band’s work ethic is clear to see: they play for several hours while crew members scurry about, taking care of things like lighting design and on-stage video screens. Incredibly, Taylor’s energy levels don’t appear to dip as the hours tick by. Once the rehearsal is complete, she still has time for the new female crew members who adoringly swarm around her at the end to ask questions. As they dissipate, I ask Taylor how she feels about being a role model. 

“I definitely see the influence on people, which is cool,” she says. “I think if I could be a role model in any way, it would be that I’m imperfect rather than representing this unattainable goal. With women especially, you have to be so many different things, perfectly — just the right amount of every ingredient. You don’t have to be the squeakiest clean version of yourself to be successful in what you do.”

With the ‘S word’ raised, I ask Taylor if she’s experienced Australia’s infamous Tall Poppy Syndrome, now that Amyl and the Sniffers’ success is on a rapid upward trajectory. 

“In theory, people want a successful woman — someone who’s complicated and doing well,” she responds. “But a lot of the time when that actually happens in practice, they’re like, ‘Actually, fuck that. You gotta be more like this, and more like that.’ But then in 50 years when I’m dead and gone or whatever the fuck, they’re like, ‘That’s dope.’ But I feel like people are always a bit late to respect stuff.

“With this new album there’s been a big acceptance of what we are and what we do. Whereas with the last two albums, I think it was still teetering where people were like, ‘Oh you shouldn’t be doing that stuff, and having ‘fuck’ in your lyrics.’ You know? Telling us what we should and shouldn’t do.” 

I wonder aloud if Amyl and the Sniffers might one day transcend the haters to join ‘Our Nicole’, ‘Our Kylie’ and ‘Our Hugh’ as a beacon of Australian cultural pride — ‘Our Amyl’ certainly has a nice ring to it. 

“If people said that, it would mean that we’re making them proud, and I want to make people proud. I want them to be like, ‘Fuck yeah, those guys did it. The music industry is dying and somehow those four fuckwits have done something good,’” says Taylor. “What we’re doing is risky — you put yourself out there and be physically, emotionally, and spiritually vulnerable every time you do anything, because you’re in the public eye. If people do wanna bitch about us, that’s fine — as long as they’re bitching about us becoming successful.” 

Amyl and the Sniffers

Later on, we locate Mehrtens, Romer, and Wilson in the backstage green room. Management hands out late, jokey Christmas gifts to everyone. Taylor gleefully shows me a book she receives: How to Work With Stupid People. She mentions she’s called for a proper band meeting to be held soon to talk about the future. 

“2026, that’ll be 10 years of the band — I started the band when I was 20, so I’ll be 30 next year,” says Taylor. “We work super hard and we’re on the go so much, so I just think we should have a think about what we want to be doing. ‘Cos none of us have any other skills. Like, we’re all super unemployable in the most extreme way you can ever imagine. We put all our eggs in one basket, so I just think we should all have a think about putting some eggs in some other parts of our life. (“Easter’s comin’!” Romer fires back in fine smart-arse form.)

“What I’m trying to say is that it can all just run away from you and the next thing you know we’ll be 50 and like, ‘Whoops, that was our whole life on tour.’ Bryce has a partner, and he probably wants to spend time with her. You need to put time into relationships and friendships. I don’t want us to just work our life away.” (During Taylor’s knockout BIGSOUND keynote speech in September last year, she hilariously told a room full of industry peers that she’s currently so busy that “[I] barely have time to get the puss waxed.”)

As for the next Amyl and the Sniffers album, Taylor suggests the band could go in some surprising new directions. 

“We’ve had three really successful punk and rock albums, but I’d love to make an Aussie country album. Chad Morgan, Slim Dusty, that kind of stuff. You know, just shake shit up. If you don’t think about it and talk about it, again, we would just end up touring until we drop dead, basically.” 

Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, January 25th, 2025 — the night after the band’s biggest show playing to 9,000 people at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl. 

Amy Taylor, lead singer of Melbourne four-piece punk-rock band Amyl and the Sniffers, has jumped off stage and disappeared somewhere among the 5,000 or so people at tonight’s sold-out show. The crowd covers every age, gender, and sexuality you can think of, a testament to Taylor’s authenticity, plainspoken relatability, and drive to make the band’s shows an inclusive space where all are welcome. In between belters like “Hertz”, “Security”, and “Jerkin’”, there’s an invitation to join the band at an Invasion Day rally to support Indigenous Australians, shout-outs to the non-binary people in the crowd, and a denouncement of division with several cries of “Fuck Donald Trump!” 

Watching Taylor on stage, the seemingly disparate influences she shared during an earlier chat — Motörhead, Chopper Read, TV sitcom The Nanny — suddenly makes perfect sense: they each represent outspoken and often abrasive people who kick against the norm, working class outsiders who make their way into people’s hearts, usually despite the odds. And make no mistake: people love Taylor. Throughout tonight’s gig, every lyric is enthusiastically screamed back at her, and shouts of “We love you Amy!” regularly ring out. Although the band occasionally unleash bursts of righteous anger from the stage, the overall feeling is one of unbridled joy, community, and celebration. This party is for everyone, but especially the underdogs.

Backstage after the barnstorming show, Taylor looks every inch the glamorous, megawatt rock star with her striking make-up and stylishly blow-dried hair, but she’s still the exact same warm, exceptionally friendly person I met the week prior in Melbourne — the rock ’n’ roll tornado persona of ‘Amyl’, it seems, has been left back on the decimated stage. 

After watching her generously give some personal time to every single person at the afterparty, I ask Taylor where she finds the energy — that magical currency she seems to carry in considerable abundance. 

A pause. 

“I don’t know. Sometimes I get into bed at night and I think that there’s an earthquake, but I’m just vibrating because I’m so full of energy. I think there’s so much to get out of life. I just want to squeeze it all the way to the bottom.”

This article features in the March-May 2025 issue of Rolling Stone AU/NZ. If you’re eager to get your hands on it, then now is the time to sign up for a subscription.

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