Amyl and The Sniffers, O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester review • DIY Magazine

Come the end of the year, Amyl And The Sniffers will be stepping out on stadium stages on home soil to open for their ultimate rock heroes - and fellow Aussie icons - AC/DC. A lightyear away from their dive bar, pub rock roots, it’s a milestone that vocalist Amy Taylor has unsurprisingly described as “a highlight of my literal life.”

And from the opening seconds of their sold out show at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse, you’d be hard pressed to think of anyone more deserving of taking on that hallowed duty. Taylor arrives onstage like the bonafide punk rock superhero she is, yelling “how you doing? If anyone goes down you help them up!”, before the scuzzy guitars of deep cut ‘Balaclava Lover Boogie’ set a relentless pace for the night ahead.

The menacing smirk on Taylor’s face rarely lets up as the band thrash into ‘Chewing Gum’, standing mighty before the crowd gathered in this industrial warehouse on the edge of town. Such cuts - lifted from the band’s adored third full-length, ‘Cartoon Darkness’ - could genuinely feel at home alongside some of the biggest punk anthems of all time, with the way they spark mass singalongs and frenzied moshpits throughout.

It would be doing both Taylor’s lyrical genius and the band’s violent precision a disservice to call an Amyl show ‘back-to-basics’, but there is, however, a marked no-bullshit air to proceedings that feels electrifying. As big riffs ring out and “OI! OI!” crowd chants echo early rock‘n’roll giants, there’s a spit and sawdust air of bravado that seems to epitomise one central idea: if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

“Ey, this feels like a fucking Friday!” thunders Taylor before amped up highlight ‘Doing In Me Head’ - a feral epic which sees pints hit the ceiling and items of clothing swirl through the air. The rampant, hard-rocking continues as the band gun through a twenty-song setlist that stretches way beyond their typical punk pigeonholing: at points, guitarist Declan Mehrtens dives into thrash metal solos fit for an Iron Maiden or Motörhead gig, all while retaining the band’s signature humour as he flicks middle fingers to the crowd with a grin.

As she charges around the stage with her iconic bleach blonde curls bouncing to anthems like ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’, you can't help but think that aliens could study Taylor’s high-wired brain for scientific purposes in years to come. Even their "slowie", ‘Big Dreams’ - which they dedicate to “everyone having a tough time, and who the fuck isn’t?” - hits at thrashing hyper-speed.

Beyond the total release that an Amyl and The Sniffers show brings, they also - like all the punk greats - use their platform to take pointed aim at the world's fuckery. Women's rights anthem 'Knifey' is goosebump-inducing, giving voice to the fear that women and non-binary people face by simply existing. “All I ever wanted was to walk by the river, see the stars / Please, stop fucking me up," Taylor thunders. It's immensely powerful.

The truth is, everyone wants to be in this hell-raising, party-starting gang. And, when they join the likes of Angus Young and DC on the biggest stages out there, it’s almost inevitable that they’ll be showing the old guard of rock‘n’roll a few new tricks of their own.

More importantly though, having often spoken publicly about external perceptions of herself, Taylor is every inch the change she wants to see for women. Looking around at tonight's majority female crowd, you can’t help but feel that the “young girls and non-binary folk” she addresses are in safe hands, so long as Amyl keep laying waste to towns the world over.

Tags: Amyl & The Sniffers, Reviews, Live Reviews