Viagra Boys at Brixton Academy
20 amplifiers, one megaphone and an indiscernible number of beers await the Viagra Boys on stage at the Brixton Academy. Flanked by synthesiser/bongo player Elias Jungqvist (in hotpants) and sax/flute/guitarist Oscar Carls (in denim cutoffs), singer Sebastian Murphy (topless, sunglasses) launches into Man Made of Meat – a great way to open the new album, but accompanied by 5,000 people yelling, “I am a man that’s made of meat / You’re on the internet looking at feet,” an even better way to start a show.
The Swedish band’s energy is rock hard from the outset, and keeps reaching new peaks over the 90-minute sweatfest, culminating in Jungqvist (keytar in hand) mounting a speaker while saxophonist Carls jumps off stage to blast the crowd in the face. And the audience match their energy pound for krona, often comprising four or five separate mosh pits and sometimes just one massive one, launching a constant stream of beers and bodies. Their only respite from the chugging onslaught are the band’s freaky sax-drenched interludes. Suffice to say Murphy is not the only topless person in the building for long.
The endlessly charismatic frontman is less chatty between songs than usual, maybe because the band has more music to get through now with four albums to draw from, or possibly because he’s just more clear-headed tonight. But the sarcastic singer still makes time for some hilarious intros, teeing up the skronking freakout Down in the Basement as a song about “doing weird sex stuff in your basement when no one’s looking”.
The Boys burn through Cave World-era classics Ain’t No Thief and Troglodyte, but weirdly it’s their very first single Sports that gets the biggest reaction from the crowd, especially when Murphy starts doing press-ups – a clever bit of choreography that allows him to start the next song lying on the floor, before disappearing behind Jungqvist’s laptop, presumably to Google pictures of feet. They re-emerge for a climactic encore, proving that whether they’re playing new gems (The Bog Body) or old favourites (Worms), Viagra Boys will never let you down.
Dan Meier
Photos: Mike Garnell
For further information and future events visit Viagra Boys’s website here.
Watch the video for the single The Bog Body here:
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