On 6th March 2026, Viagra Boys headlined a sold-out Ally Pally. Is that really a sentence any of us would have anticipated back when surprise hit ‘Sports’ first emerged back in 2018? Maybe not, but at the biggest show they’ve ever played, and singer Sebastian Murphy’s 36th birthday, he reveals the secret to his success: praying to god that one day he’d headline this venue, have a big belly, and survive the near-death experience he was in the middle of at 16 years old.
Yeah, we’re not sure if he’s serious either, sorry. It’d be par for the course if he was though, nestling alongside the club megamix the band play before they take to the stage and the duelling saxophone interlude that makes up most of ‘Research Chemicals’ as just another indication of what makes this band such a bizarre cult smash.
Speaking of cult commitment, there are people in the mosh pit in full shrimp costumes, a reference to Sebastian’s obsession with the arthropod, as well as the band’s fictional holding company Shrimptech Enterprises. This is a fact only conveyed to most of the audience after Sebastian has to halt the show to stop one of them being trampled by the front rows.
So why the devotion? Well, there just really isn’t anything quite like a Viagra Boys show, with the party punk bangers assuming new, danceable forms live, helped along by a surprisingly high-end lightshow. It doesn’t hurt that the band are deceptively accomplished musicians, or that Sebastian is such an oddly charismatic frontman / cult leader, seeing a mass response when he urges the crowd to “pray to the big shrimp in the sky to fix my fucking back”, which is causing him crippling pain throughout the gig.
Musically, they’re on top form despite the injuries, with live standards ‘Worms’ and ‘Punk Rock Loser’ sounding as fresh as the day they were born, while new song ‘Therapy’ makes a great case for the band still being in the form of their life. As a special treat for this birthday / biggest show of their career so far, 2020’s ‘Lick The Bag’ gets its live debut, to rapturous response.
Seeing Viagra Boys live feels a bit like entering a parallel universe entirely centred around shrimp, saxophones, and wraparound sunglasses. That was true in tiny venues nearly a decade ago, and it’s a credit to the band that it’s still true at Alexandra Palace. To steal some phrasing from the annual board meeting of the band’s Shrimptech shell company: the investors will be very pleased indeed.
Leave a Reply