Amyl and the Sniffers

House of Blues, Dallas — 3 April 2025

Amy Talor, punk incarnate

If punk is dead, someone forgot to tell Amy Taylor — or maybe she just punched the ghost in the throat and stole its boots.

Amyl and the Sniffers lit up the House of Blues like it owed them money. It wasn’t a gig. It was a full-body exorcism performed by a woman in bike shorts and fury. Taylor stalked the stage like a feral angel, snarling through “Guided by Angels” and tearing into “Hertz” like she was shredding a love letter with her teeth.

The crowd — a writhing stew of mullets, sweat, and denim — was feral from minute one. Mosh pits opened like trapdoors. Someone lost a shoe. Someone else found God.

New tracks from the upcoming album (working title: Fight Me Outside Woolies) landed like a steel-capped boot to the ribcage. “Neon Leash” is a standout — less a song than a demand delivered at knifepoint. It confirms what we all suspect: Amyl aren’t evolving. They’re mutating.

There’s something oddly poetic about the House of Blues, corporate sheen and all, trying to contain this chaos. It’s like bottling lightning in a longneck. You can paint the walls navy and serve cocktails in jars, but when Amy screams, “We’re not here to be polite!” — the walls start to sweat.

By the time they closed with “Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled),” Taylor had crowd-surfed, nearly decapitated a security guard with her mic cord, and somehow made existential rage sound like the national anthem of everyone who ever got kicked out of school for being "a bit much."

The Sniffers are tight, loud, and lethal. Guitarist Dec Martens plays like he’s trying to crack the Earth's crust, and drummer Bryce Wilson deserves hazard pay. It’s all held together with bassist Gus Romer’s dead-eyed groove — the calm in a cyclone of chaos.

In short? It was loud. It was sweaty. It was perfect.