Amyl and The Sniffers announce 'Comfort To Me'

If you thought Amyl and The Sniffers reached their peak on their debut full-length back in 2019, you’d be part of the vast majority of us gobsmacked by our own obsession with how the band made rock’n’roll feel new again. It should therefore come as no surprise just how much we’re anticipating the follow-up album from the Melbourne act, Comfort To Me, which will be out on September 10th via B2B Records.

In the meantime, the iconic band have shared lead single ‘Guided by Angels’, which delivers both brutally and in spades. The clip, directed by John Angus Stewart for PHC Films, can be viewed in its entirety below. Comfort To Me as a record was written throughout the pandemic while frontwoman Amy Taylor and her bandmates – guitarist Dec Martens, bassist Gus Romer, and drummer Bryce Wilson – quarantined together. But it appears that Taylor was sitting on lyrics from even before that time, tracing all the way back to the Summer of 2019/2020.

“Half of the lyrics were written during the Australian bushfire season, when we were already wearing masks to protect ourselves from the smoke in the air,” she explains. “And then when the pandemic hit, our options were the same as everyone: go find a day job and work in intense conditions or sit at home and drown in introspection. I fell into the latter category. I had all this energy inside of me and nowhere to put it, because I couldn’t perform, and it had a hectic effect on my brain. My brain evolved and warped and my way of thinking about the world completely changed.”

She continues: “Having to deal with a lot of authority during 2020 and realising my lack of power made me feel both more self destructive and more self disciplined, more nihilistic and more depressed and more resentful, which ultimately fuelled me with a kind of relentless motivation. I became a temporary monster. I partied more, but I also exercised heaps, read books and ate veggies. I was like an egg going into boiling water when this started, gooey and weak but with a hard surface. I came out even harder. I’m still soft on the inside, but in a different way.”

Amyl and The Sniffers are set to play Splendour XR this July and at Carriageworks as part of the Vivid Sydney line-up in August, so we’re cautiously optimistic that things will only look up for Taylor and the gang from here. In the meantime, they’ve gifted us with a truly ruthless banger in ‘Guided By Angels’, which it’s safe to say we’ll be leaving on repeat until it spins us all the way out of lockdown.