AMYL & THE SNIFFERS - Levitation

One of the many reasons I flew out for Levitation Music Festival this year was for Amyl and The Sniffers. My good buddy out in British Columbia, Canada turned me on to the band around two years ago and I’ve been a fan since.

Amy Taylor the lead singer of the band has some of the most erratic energy I’ve ever seen from a live performer. The term Rockstar is thrown around a lot, but she embodies that term in every conceivable metric. From the outfits, hair, and make-up to the insane over the top screaming + energy - this is a person at the forefront of a revolution in music.

I’ve watched countless performances of the band on YouTube and been following the insane social media antics from the last couple of years. To say I was stoked to attend this show would be an understatement.

On all fronts I was impressed with Amyl and The Sniffers show. I was only allowed pit access for about 1 min or so, but in that time I saw Amy run across the stage speakers, screaming into her mic, and interacting with the crowd. Crowd surfing and moshing was a constant at this show and looked like such an insane time to be in the pit. The rest of the band as well had a fantastic stage presence, but due to my time constraints I couldn’t capture them.

The realization that all of this was taking place in the back of a BBQ joint made it all the better. Such a strange place for a concert - with a crowd dressed in mostly Halloween gear. It felt like I was in an episode of Adventure Time with wandering travelers everywhere you could look. Drunken antics were present across the dirt filled replica town, making it feel like the Wild West.

Another photographer there (@vicious_velma) captured this absolute gem of a photo before the performance.

I watched Amyl and The Sniffers set towards the back of the venue taking in the sights and sounds from the show. If you see a lot of performances (like I do) it always makes you happy when an artist of this size / scale puts on an amazing production on all accounts. A standout concert when you’ve seen hundreds of shows is a rarity - almost never happens in fact.

I want to shoutout the dude who got a nipple tattooed on his leg to help his buddy become a body restoration tattoo artist.

This completed the experience for me.