Amyl and the Sniffers took a stand on Palestine and called out J.K. Rowling and Donald Trump during their Reading Festival 2025 performance.
During the performance, frontwoman Amy Taylor paused between tracks to address the crowd, according to NME. She said: “I want to say fuck J.K. Rowling, and I want to say my heart is with the people in Palestine. It takes nothing to think about that kind of thing and talk about that kind of thing, and any kind of action is some kind of action. What else can I say? I guess fuck Trump, haha! That’s it, and I’ll leave it at that.”
Enter Shikari also used their set to address political issues. Frontman Rou Reynolds reflected on learning about the Israel–Palestine conflict in 2010, saying Israel “treated Palestinians like second-class citizens. It subjected them to constant intimidation, humiliation, subjugation, and forced them to live in what was often described as an open-air prison.”
Reynolds added: “That was 15 years ago. We’ve all seen just how fucking horrific things we’ve got now. We’ve seen the firepower equivalent of six Hiroshima atomic bombs dropped on Gaza in the last two years, every single school and university destroyed. Almost 300 journalists murdered.”
hozier’s beautiful speech on palestine, lgbt+ rights and standing up for what you believe in that was cut by the bbc pic.twitter.com/CUEiP9XbDx
— ִֶָ (@saintscain) August 23, 2025
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Hozier also spoke to the audience about Gaza, linking the issue to broader themes of equality and free speech. “Safety and security for everybody in the Middle East means seeing a Palestine that’s free from occupation, that’s free from these cycles of genocide and violence, and it means seeing a Palestine that’s free to move towards meaningful self-determination and statehood,” he said.
In other news, Amyl and the Sniffers’ album Cartoon Darkness has been ranked number four on Rolling Stone AU/NZ’s list of the 100 Best Australian Albums of the 2020s So Far.
The feature described it as “a thrilling album from Australia’s best rock ‘n roll band… tackling weighty subjects including the climate crisis and the rise of AI with passion and verve.”
The album has also earned recognition at the Rolling Stone Australia Awards for Best Live Act and Best LP/EP, peaked at No. 2 on the ARIA Albums Chart, No. 9 on the Official UK Albums Chart, and entered the Billboard 200.
