Amyl and the Sniffers say ‘Fuck Trump’ at Red Rocks

Amy Taylor turned Red Rocks into a punk rally during Amyl and the Sniffers’ explosive June 17 set.

Thousands of edgy, like-minded radicals gathered at Red Rocks to worship at the church of Amyl and the Snifflers. The audience was engaged and heavily costumed in grungy, often scantily dressed attire, but the atmosphere was incredibly safe, respectful and empowering.

That’s because the Australian band’s punk and feminist politics were more than just stage decoration at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Wednesday evening. Before “Tiny Bikini,” vocalist Amy Taylor paused the band’s ferocious set to discuss the current cruelty, how marginalized people are treated and the sense that politicians Down Under are borrowing from “the Trump playbook.”

“It’s not fucking radical that other people, you care about them,” Taylor told the crowd, before reminding fans that people with the same basic sense of decency exist “even in the random parts” of the country. “So, don’t fucking give up, because it’s going to start to change.”

Sponsored

Amy Taylor singing at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colo. | Photo: Travis Lambert

That mix of fury, humor, solidarity and bodily liberation defined the June 17 show, the 64th concert of Red Rocks’ 2026 season. By the end of the night, Taylor had pulled a fan onstage, flexed through a guitar break, turned a technical delay into a joke and sent the crowd home with “GFY” after declaring, “Fuck the trillionaires.”

In other words, it was exactly the type of in-your-face rebel rock that Amyl and the Sniffers are known for. The Melbourne pub-rockers — Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, drummer Bryce Wilson and bassist Gus Romer — have often been compared to the blunt-force energy of ’70s punk, with Taylor’s presence serving as both ignition switch and battering ram. At Red Rocks, that reputation felt earned within minutes of them taking the stage.

A windy night for punk baddies

The evening began warm and loose, with temperatures still in the 80s around 7:30 p.m. before the amphitheatre cooled down and turned windy after dark. The weather never fully derailed the night, though it did make L7’s middle set feel chillier in more ways than one. Before Amyl and the Sniffers took the stage, the most animated part of the venue may have been the crowd itself: punk baddies in wild fits, grungy makeup, bikinis, combat boots and one man in a shirt that read, “angry music for happy people.”

Party Dozen opened at 8 p.m. with a gloriously abrasive half-hour set. The Sydney duo — drummer Jonathan Boulet and saxophonist/vocalist Kirsty Tickle — made enough noise to fill the rocks on their own. Tickle screamed into her saxophone, tore across the stage in black Converse and hopped while playing, turning the instrument into something closer to a weapon than a horn.

“Thank you for coming out early,” Tickle said. “This is a fucking dream.”

The set was not always easy to parse lyrically, especially through the screamo squall, but that barely mattered. Songs like “The Money and the Drugs” hit with a grimy force that made the crowd go crazy. By the end, Tickle had raised the sax and her other hand toward the crowd before the duo closed on a massive riff, leaving the stage with the kind of energy that made the next act’s stillness even more noticeable.

L7 began at 8:45 p.m., playing from offstage before walking on with guitars in hand. The Los Angeles band’s set was more polished and certainly easier to understand, but it was also surprisingly inert. Donita Sparks remained a funny, spiky presence between songs, joking that a cracked press-on nail must have been caused by the altitude and quipping, “Talk about Rocky Mountain high on life.”

L7 opened for Amyl and the Sniffers at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colo. | Photo: Toni Tresca

She also nodded to the band’s history at the venue, saying L7 had not played Red Rocks in “29 years, one month and eight days,” when the group opened for Social Distortion. Later, introducing “Dispatch From Mar-a-Lago,” Sparks said the band wrote the song before Trump was president the first time and joked that they thought they might be “storming the gates of Mar-a-Lago.”

Yet the set rarely matched that bite physically. For a band that helped define a snarling strain of feminist punk and grunge, L7 felt strangely stationary. The wind, at times, became the most dynamic thing onstage, blowing smoke backward into spirals around the musicians and sending grit into people’s eyes. Sparks closed the set by dedicating “Fast and Frightening” to “all the ladies,” but by the time L7 wrapped at 9:27 p.m., the amphitheatre felt ready for a jolt.

Amy Taylor takes control

It had to wait a little longer. Amyl and the Sniffers did not emerge until around 10 p.m., a long pause for a Wednesday night show that had been listed with an 8 p.m. start time. Luckily, the headling act was worth the wait. As “The Best Thing About Being a Woman” played as walkout music, Amyl and the Sniffers took the stage and launched into “Control.”

“It feels like an honor,” Taylor said early in the set. “This is a spiritual place. Let’s fucking go.”

Amy Taylor performs at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colo. | Photo: Travis Lambert

From there, she barely stopped moving. Taylor made the previous set look geriatric by comparison, whipping her hair, dancing with total abandon and prowling the stage with such speed that the follow spot could not always keep up. During “Stuck on You,” one of the night’s first major crowd favorites, the amphitheatre finally felt fully awake.

The middle of the set brought some of the night’s best moments. “Tiny Bikini” became a mini-manifesto for self-expression, political disgust and collective defiance. After Taylor’s speech, she pulled a fan onstage for the song, then shouted out “that legend” afterward. “Get Out of There” came with a dedication to her friend, who Taylor said was due to give birth Monday: “I hope she gets out of there today.”

Amy Taylor jams out at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colo. | Photo: Travis Lambert

Mehrtens got his own laugh later, predicting that Australia would beat the USA and adding, “More like Who-SA … fuck Trump.” When his pedal briefly failed afterward, Taylor jumped in: “That’s what you get for insulting the USA, but he’s right. Fuck Trump.”

The set’s most thrilling guest spot arrived when Taylor invited Tickle back out for “U Should Not Be Doing That,” after telling the crowd that everybody knows what it feels like to be judged for who they are, what they do or how they dress. “Let that freak flag fly,” she said. Tickle’s saxophone and Mehrtens’ guitar then tore into each other, transforming the song into a wild, serrated conversation between noise and nerve.

Kirsty Tickle of Party Dozen and Amy Taylor of Amyl and the Sniffer perform together at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colo. | Photo: Travis Lambert

By then, the wind had mercifully chilled out, as if Amyl and the Sniffers had overpowered it by sheer force. By this point, the last eight rows were mostly empty, indicating that the amphitheatre was not sold out, but the people who were there were locked in.

Near the end, Taylor introduced “Jerkin’” as “a true story,” with the names changed, and invited anyone who knew the lyrics to sing along. “Hertz” closed the main set with a final burst before the band made the audience wait about a minute for an encore. They returned with “Got You,” and then gave Red Rocks one final kick with “GFY.”

Although the headlining act took a while to take the stage, once Taylor hit the stage, the wait didn’t seem to matter to the crowd. Amyl and the Sniffers turned a windy Wednesday into a punk rally for freaks, feminists, anti-authoritarians and anyone who came to Red Rocks dressed like it was the end of the world but was going to dance through it anyway.