Letter from the Editor and Photo Gallery: The Amyl and the Sniffers Cover Story

The post Letter from the Editor and Photo Gallery: The Amyl and the Sniffers Cover Story appeared first on Consequence .

With a shout of “freaks to the front!”, Australia’s Amyl and the Sniffers began their international breakout with the release of 2021’s Comfort to Me .  The sophomore album arrived as over a year of pent up energy was ready to explode, and the band’s rowdy call for unity and resilience was well heeded — and well needed. Now, the band is back with Cartoon Darkness , once more pushing back despair with a fiery punk light that has them blazing onto the latest Consequence Cover Story : Amyl and the Sniffers: Playing Through Pain .

It’s too simple to write off a punk band flashing on the cover of the album , pissing on the cover of the lead single , and surrounding themselves with naked people in the video for a track called “Jerkin” as pure shock value. While there’s certainly some valuable shock in the packaging, Amyl and the Sniffers aren’t rebellious for the sake of rebellion. Like so many millennial/Gen-Z cuspers, they’re angry, they’re scared, and they’re screaming for relief.

This urgency drives both the title of Cartoon Darkness and our 14th cover story. In conversation with Features Editor Wren Graves, the Melbourne outfit explore the concepts and emotions that fueled their latest record — a sense of a foreboding future that is not yet fully colored in. They discuss the anger they bring to their music while also striving, as singer Amy Taylor puts it, “to be full of curiosity and wonder rather than full of fear.”

This is what it means to play through the pain — to understand that yes, we are hurting, but yes, we can push forward. The future is a distorted sketch, and addressing it with the distorted sounds of righteous punk can help fend off the darkness. It can also wreak havoc on your vocal chords, as Taylor will attest, but when the world tries to muffle you, sometimes you’ve just got to scream back.

Amyl and the Sniffers are screaming loud and clear, but it’s a rallying cry — a welcoming rage. It’s the kind of fury that brings catharsis, urging listeners to let fear and anger melt into something far more freeing: fun.

Answer their call by reading the Consequence Cover Story Amyl and the Sniffers: Playing Through Pain now. Then, catch the band on their upcoming world tour dates by grabbing tickets tickets for the US and Canada dates here , and UK, EU, and Oceania here .

Below, check out the official cover story artwork, as well as a full gallery of photos.

Photo by Ben Kaye / Design by Allison Aubrey

Letter from the Editor and Photo Gallery: The Amyl and the Sniffers Cover Story
Ben Kaye