Wunderhorse are on the up and up. In the past six months alone they’ve supported Fontaines D.C. on US and UK tours, released their debut album (Cub), and joined Pixies on a 16-date European jaunt.
They’re now on a national headline tour that’s almost entirely sold out. And all over the 1500-capacity Electric Ballroom are posters advertising their upcoming November show at O2 Forum Kentish Town, a venue that packs in almost 1000 more people than tonight.
If you call your band Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, you’re not really going to be serving up subtlety. And so it is for this Newcastle five-piece, who apply the same more-is-more approach of their name to their music and live performances.
It’s in Matt Baty’s roar as he delivers lyrics about everything from self-esteem to religion. It’s in the brutal tectonic riffs laid down by guitarists Sam Grant and Adam Sykes in Black Sabbath-on-steroids anthems like Halloween Bolson. It’s in the unflinching rhythms of drummer Chris Morley and bassist Johnny Hedley that make the group sound like a marching herd of mastodons, right from the very opening beats of show-starter Reducer.
“I never thought I’d be sitting here in London, shouting into a microphone about worms,” admits Sebastian Murphy from Electric Ballroom’s stage.
He’s not the only one. Superficially, at least, Viagra Boys’ rise from the Stockholm punk scene seems surprising. There’s that name. There are the lyrics: Worms does what it says on the tin; one of the band’s biggest songs has Murphy listing various sports. There are the sax solos. There’s the keytar. There’s the sense that they’re just taking the piss.
Nils van der Linden