Kinetic Australian punks Amyl and the Sniffers headline the Fox in Oakland

CBS News

08-04-2025

Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers bring their high-energy stage show and songs from their latest album
Cartoon Darkness
to the Fox Theater in Oakland Saturday night with support from punk/metal power-pop crew Sheer Mag.
Since first coming together in 2016, the Australian quartet has risen to become one of the most celebrated new acts to emerge from Down Under in the past decade. Formed by pint-sized, bleach-blonde singer Amy Taylor (aka the band's namesake Amyl) and her housemates in suburban Melbourne, the group named itself after the party drug amyl nitrate or "poppers."
Taking cues from classic '70s proto-punk (particularly Iggy and the Stooges), glam, pub rock and modern punk, the band's recorded and released their debut EP
Giddy Up
that same year, reportedly tracking the four songs in just 12 hours. While the raw early recordings featured on that recording and the follow-up
Big Attraction
EP showed the band's knack for writing short -- often only 90 seconds long -- catchy blasts of punk, it was their feral live show that established the band in Australia. Shows often found the diminutive vocalist spending as much time crowd surfing or on the floor dancing with the audience as onstage during performances.
The group would enter the studio to record their debut full-length with producer Ross Orton (the former drummer for UK synth-punk band Add N to X), releasing their eponymous album in 2019 on Flightless, the label affiliated with popular Australian psych band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (ATO and Rough Trade would issue the record in other parts of the world). The album would receive uniformly high praise from critics, earning the ARIA Award -- Australia's version of the Grammy -- for Best Rock Album and getting nominated for the Australian Music Prize.
King Gizzard had already provided Amyl and company with their first significant exposure in the U.S., taking them out on a North American tour the year prior. The quartet would become a regular attraction at festivals its native Australia, Europe and the States, appearing at Coachella and Oakland's own garage-punk celebration the Mosswood Meltdown.
While the pandemic put a pause on the band's momentum and busy touring plans, Amyl and the Sniffers issued their sophomore effort
Comfort to Me
to another round of ecstatic notices last year. While maintaining the group's aggressive musical attack, some of the new songs found Taylor ruminating on self-empowerment, sexual politics and emotional vulnerability that elevated the visceral impact of the album.
In 2022, the band returned to the Bay Area for a pair of sold-out shows at the Great American Music Hall in in the spring and paid the region another visit to headline the first night of the Halloween Meltdown in Oakland's Mosswood Park. The band has issued an expanded edition of
Comfort to Me
that featured a full live performance recording made on an empty dock in Melbourne during the pandemic.
The band embarked on another national tour last summer that included several festival stops, including a raging set at Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park. Last fall, the quartet released its latest effort,
Cartoon Darkness
. While still retaining their unbridled punk fury and Taylor's trademark snarl and biting humor at its center, the band's third album shows them stretching into more melodic territory.
Still as blunt and profane as their earlier songs (see album opener "Jerkin'" and its video packed with blurred, full-frontal nudity for proof), this round of tunes focuses some of Taylor's bile at the punk rock gatekeepers who question her legitimacy ("U Should Not Be Doing That"). At the same time, the singer questions her own onstage image on "Tiny Bikini" and turns more introspective on a couple of uncharacteristically quieter songs ("Bailing On Me," "Big Dreams").
Amyl and company bring their latest tour
to Oakland's Fox Theater on Saturday night
, returning to the biggest Bay Area venue the band has headlined. For this show, they are joined by acclaimed Philadelphia-based punk band Sheer Mag. Contemporaries who also feature a distinctive powerhouse female singer in Tina Halladay -- the two groups appeared together at two editions of the Mosswood Meltdown in 2019 and 2022 -- the band's roots stretch back to when the vocalist and fellow core members Matt Palmer and siblings Kyle and Hart Seely while attending Purchase College in New York.
Relocating to Philadelphia, the band formed in 2014 and soon started churning out 7-inch singles equally informed by punk, '70s hard rock (especially the harmonized twin-guitar sound of Thin Lizzy) and power pop. Sheer Mag has released three albums while touring with such diverse bands as PUP, Coheed and Cambria and Power Trip. The group put out its latest
Playing Favorites
a year ago on Jack White's Third Man Records.
Amyl and the Sniffers with Sheer Mag
Saturday, April 12, 7 p.m. $39.50-$59.50 (sold out)
Fox Theater