Photo Credit: Visions of the Abyss
There’s something strangely transcendent about Amigo The Devil – a project that teeters between Vaudevillian chaos and crushing sincerity, with a healthy sprinkling of the melodramatic. Helmed by Texas-based Danny Kiranos, Amigo The Devil isn’t just music; it’s a kind of possessed cabaret. Flanked by a band of equally unhinged yet meticulous performers – including guitarist David Talley and Kiranos’s sister Katerina – the group has earned a reputation for shows that are equal parts horror story and heart-to-heart, a macabre celebration of sincerity and absurdity. But beneath the chaos lies a quiet evolution: one shaped not just by music, but by the relationships that sustain it.
Not just the inter-personal relationships in the band, either. After supporting Frank Turner on some American dates back in 2022, Danny was quickly offered a run with his full band; the result? According to Danny, “probably one of the best fucking tours we’ve ever had.” It wasn’t just a run of dates, but the solidifying of something deeper.
“We truly became family,” he reflects. “Usually you tour for so long that you start getting jaded, start forgetting the simple joy of touring. Our camp’s normally a disaster; [instead], they brought our camps closer together.” Indeed, even upon the conclusion of the UK tour, Katerina stayed on under her moniker Katacombs and supported Frank Turner on his run of US-dates.
That sense of joy, chaos, and deep emotional undercurrent bleeds into their live show – as witnessed in Southampton, where the crowd was flung from laughter to lament in minutes. Tracks like Murder at the Bingo Hall and Once Upon a Time at Tesco Pt. 1 lurch between manic comedy and morbid poetry, while the aching Cocaine and Abel exposes the raw vulnerability Amigo is increasingly leaning into.
Still, the band’s evolution wasn’t always easy. Looking back on the just-turned-four album Born Against, Danny admits he doesn’t remember much of it. “I didn’t really have the ability to actually process those songs; I couldn’t enjoy or experience what was going on around me,” he says. “The whole record cycle’s lost to me.” Katerina, not yet in the band at the time, remembers differently – recalling the pride she felt hearing those early demos with her family. “That was the bridge,” she says, “from what you were doing before to what we’re doing now.”
That “we” matters. Talking about the song Cannibal Within, and the context given during live shows, it often got a little heavy: “[The Cannibal Within] seems to encompass all of those feelings, the self doubt and jealousy, and I think that all comes from a place of allowing myself to be uncertain. Constantly. To the point where you stop listening to the voices that matter, including your own. The cannibal within… it just grows and grows and grows. It gets bigger and bigger, and then you lose sight of who the fuck you are. She [Katerina] saved me through all that. She’s seen me go through it a million times.”
But Amigo The Devil is no longer a solitary force; it’s that sense of family, both metaphorical and, in the case of the brother-sister pair, literal, that keeps Danny grounded through periods of doubt and self-erasure. “It’s not just one dark mind anymore,” Katerina quips. “It’s an ocean.” And with members branching into their own projects – from Talley’s solo work to Katerina’s own recent release – Danny sees this growth as essential. “I’m trying to grow within myself — not just as Amigo, but as Danny.”
Still, Danny remains open about ego, insecurity, and the “absolute fucking cyclone of uncertainty” that often comes with creating art that means something. “Initially, the purpose of Amigo was to be a rootless situation, just kind of floating around,” he explains. “But as people started naming it, identifying it, it started to weigh on me: I felt this pressure to catch up to something I never intended.”
As for what’s next? “There are a couple records in the conceptual phase,” Danny teases. “Some themes, some songs. But at its core, Amigo is still about diving into the deepest, heaviest parts of the human condition.”
Whether solo or surrounded by his chosen family of musicians, Danny is reaching for something deeper than performance. As the fan-favourite Hungover In Jonestown goes, “Life is a joke, and Death is the punchline.” Yet, somewhere between the laughter and the weight of it all, Amigo The Devil keeps finding new ways to make it all better.
Interview by: James O’Sullivan
