Before the chaos erupted, Swedish support band Boko Yout set the tone with something entirely unhinged. Clad in Boy Scout-style uniforms and led by a frontman wearing a head torch like some deranged forest guide, they delivered a frenetic, psych-tinged assault that felt like a campfire séance gone wrong. It was strange, it was noisy, and it made perfect sense.
Then came the main event.
Viagra Boys don’t ease you in — they pour straight from the bottle, warm and fizzing, unapologetically flat in places and violently carbonated in others. At Brixton Academy on a heaving Tuesday night, the Stockholm-bred band uncorked their latest vintage with a set that was rowdy, unhinged, and wildly drinkable.
Kicking off with “Man Made of Meat,” they lit the fuse early. This was no slow burn; the venue detonated on impact. The sold-out crowd was packed wall-to-wall—elbows up, airborne pints, and no breathing room between strangers. If there was a free space, it had long since been absorbed into the strobe-heavy blur.
Touring in support of their latest album, Viagra Boys, part of the Infinite Anxiety Tour, the band pulled deep from their now-expansive cellar: “Slow Learner,” “Troglodyte,” “Dirty Boyz,” and the bubbling menace of “Research Chemicals.” Each track hit like a different blend—sometimes metallic and jagged, occasionally syrupy with grime.
Frontman Sebastian Murphy prowled the stage with that signature mix of sleaze and charm, shirtless as ever, dressed in nothing but Adidas joggers and bare feet. “How you fucking doing, London?” he barked, before throwing in a knowingly dodgy “Tuesday night, innit?”—mocking the accent with all the subtlety of a brick to the teeth. It was tongue-in-cheek chaos, delivered like a gospel sermon inside a collapsing dive bar.
Behind him, the production was gloriously absurd. A giant illuminated VB logo loomed centre stage, its circumference endlessly etched by a circling laser like some sacred sigil of degeneracy. Strobes strafed the crowd, sometimes locking in like searchlights, other times just melting retinas for sport. It was relentless—visual tinnitus.
And the sax. The sax. Like someone trying to seduce a car alarm—frantic, lusty, absolutely unhinged. Whenever it cut through the wall of distortion, it sounded like a drunken jazz ghost had wandered into a punk show and been handed the aux cord.
The highlight? No question: “Sports.” It needed no introduction, but Murphy offered one anyway with deadpan genius—“The next song’s about sports”—and suddenly the floor moved like it had opinions. The crowd shouted every line like it was scripture. Baseball! Basketball! Weiner dog!
By the encore, nobody wanted subtlety. They wanted more noise, more sweat, more chaos. The band delivered with “The Bog Body” and “Worms,” both slathered in sleaze and distortion, served filthy and unfiltered.
Viagra Boys don’t strive for polish. They ferment. They fester. They explode. Tuesday night in London never tasted so wrong — or so right.
