What’s Going On Here? Turnstile, Amyl, and Demographic Amnesia.

Just forget about trying to define and target an audience by demographics and cheap algorithms ever again. Remember that what actually moves people is identification, not categorization. 

Two bands make that point feel impossible to ignore right now: Turnstile and Amyl and the Sniffers.

Both are heavy, both are high voltage, and both have outgrown the tidy boxes that marketing likes to use. Baltimore-native hardcore Turnstile has become the beating heart of a global community. Amyl, the Melbourne punks, have gone from chaotic pub shows to opening stadiums for AC/DC’s Power Up tour in Australia.

Saying someone is a fan of either band tells you almost nothing about their age, gender, or job title, even though most concertgoers statistically cluster between 18 and 34, with older Gen X fans now stretching into their late 40s and 50s in the same rooms. It tells you instead where their cultural affinity lies. It tells you they are drawn toward intensity, honesty, physicality, and a certain refusal to be smoothed out. 

That is not a demographic. That is a stance.

A Night That Broke the Model

On Guy Fawkes Night in London, twelve thousand people proved that hardcore does not discriminate. Under a full moon, with fireworks bursting down below, they poured uphill toward Alexandra Palace at the crest of the city. Along the route, iconic red double decker buses rolled past with “Turnstile” added to the route 81 destination.

What unfolded had nothing to do with age brackets, gender identity, or consumer profiling. It had everything to do with where people choose to stand inside culture.

The sold-out hardcore show felt like a correction to the lie of modern segmentation. Openers High-Vis brought their home-grown die hard fans, followed by The Garden who alighted above the mosh pit with casual grace. The room was a living cross-section of generations and identities from Gen Z through to Gen X and well beyond. No one was there to represent a demographic. Everyone was there for the same reason: Music and Energy.

Culture Over Metrics

Turnstile has built their universe around their audience, and have cultivated true connection through songwriting and legendary shows. With over 2.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify and festival sets from Coachella to Rolling Loud, they now pull hardcore kids, indie listeners, and mainstream rock fans into the same orbit. Their aesthetic is coherent across extremes, from gentle flute melodies to full-force thrashing drums and scorched guitars. The softness means as much as the violence. The contrast is the point.

Amyl and the Sniffers operate with a similar kind of clarity. Amy Taylor does not present a carefully engineered persona. She simply arrives as herself: raw, funny, confrontational, completely uninterested in asking for permission. That energy has carried the band from sticky-floor clubs to festival stages, more than two million monthly listeners on Spotify, multiple ARIA wins for their third album Cartoon Darkness, and now a support slot with AC/DC on their Power Up stadium tour across Australia. It is not because they fit a market need. It is because they feel undeniable.

Turnstile’s audience now stretches far beyond the traditional idea that hardcore belongs only to youth.  Amyl and the Sniffers similarly dismantle the idea that punk is either male-dominated or youth-exclusive. The presence of Amy Taylor at the front visibly reshapes the gender balance of the crowd, making their rooms notably more mixed than classic punk spaces. Their demographic reach keeps widening because what people respond to is nerve, honesty, and emotional voltage, not a scene uniform.

Saying someone is a Turnstile fan does not tell you their age, education, job, or income. It tells you they are drawn to physicality, release, collective motion, and unfiltered intensity with heart still intact. Saying someone is an Amyl fan does not tell you their profession or purchase history. It tells you they respond to honesty, volatility, humor, and the feeling of having permission to exist at full volume.

None of that fits neatly in a demographic segment.
All of it matters if you care about what actually moves people.