Amyl and the Sniffers Turned Lowlands’ Opening Set Into Instant Mayhem
Amyl and the Sniffers came, saw and conquered Lowlands. The Melbourne punk rabble-rousers opened the festival’s massive Alpha stage on Friday, August 21, 2026, and apparently decided that 2 p.m. was a perfectly reasonable hour to start thee razzle-dazzling, swearing, sweating and mosh-pitting.
Lowlands had Amyl and the Sniffers scheduled from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. in Biddinghuizen, Netherlands — the first band of the day on Alpha and a very loud signal that the festival was not easing anybody into its weekend.
Doing what they do best, Amy Taylor, Declan Mehrtens, Gus Romer and Bryce Wilson turned that opening slot into a full-body wake-up call. VPRO 3voor12 counted 18 songs ripping through the hour, with the audience getting wilder as the set moved along and the first circle pit arriving once “Doing In Me Head” helped push the field over the edge.
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Lowlands Put Them On Alpha First — They Opened The Pit Instead
There is something deliciously wrong about putting this band on a giant festival stage in broad daylight. Amyl and the Sniffers are built for rooms that feel slightly too small, speakers that sound slightly too loud and crowds that start losing their manners several songs before anybody planned to.
But Alpha did not tame them. If anything, the scale only made Taylor’s particular brand of front-person electricity look bigger. The band has spent the Cartoon Darkness era stretching its pub-rock attack into larger rooms and festival fields without polishing away the part that makes the Sniffers feel dangerous in the first place.
3voor12’s dispatch from the field described the set as the first moshpit in Alpha, with “Doing In Me Head” loosening up the crowd before a circle pit and crowdsurfers followed. Their pick for the defining song of the performance? “Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled).” Honestly, could there be a better mission statement for this band?
Cartoon Darkness Still Sounds Like It Was Built For Festival Fields
The set also lands in the long tail of Cartoon Darkness, the band’s third album, released through Rough Trade in October 2024. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, the record widened the Sniffers’ attack without losing the riffs, humor or teeth.
Tracks including “Tiny Bikini,” “Doing In Me Head,” “U Should Not Be Doing That,” “Do It Do It” and “Me And The Girls” gave the band even more material designed to explode once it leaves the record and hits a crowd. By 2026, the rooms have gotten much larger. The instinct has not changed.
Lowlands itself seemed to know exactly what it was doing. VPRO’s pre-festival guide pointed to the band as the Friday afternoon Alpha opener and essentially warned everybody not to expect a gentle start. That turned out to be less a recommendation than a weather report.
Dig out more of Amyl and the Sniffers turning the Alpha stage into their own little punk playground below.
There are bands that scale up by becoming cleaner, safer and more controlled. Amyl and the Sniffers seem determined to scale up by making the bigger stage feel like a smaller, sweatier room.
At Lowlands, they got an hour, the festival’s biggest stage and a Friday crowd that had barely begun its weekend. By the time the Sniffers were done, Alpha had already discovered its first pit.
Watch Amyl and the Sniffers’ Full Lowlands 2026 Alpha Stage Set
VPRO 3voor12’s concert recording captures the band opening Alpha at Lowlands in Biddinghuizen on Friday, August 21, 2026.
Sources: VPRO 3voor12 Lowlands review; VPRO 3voor12 Lowlands 2026 coverage; Amyl and the Sniffers; Rough Trade Records.
