The Club Shit Tour popped off in Brighton!
Wargasm decided to do a tour with helping grassroots venues in mind. With all the venues being small independent club venues and having a small local band support each of the dates across the UK and mainland Europe. The tickets were also all sold through independent ticketing websites thus boycotting Ticketmaster and LiveNation and helping small businesses in the process. Keeping to small venues helped keep the experience more intimate and choosing support bands in each city helped the bands to grow their fanbases and introduce new music to Wargasm fans.
The evening started off strong with local up-and-coming band Eville. I hadn’t listened to Eville before, but I was pleasantly surprised. They describe their music as Brat-Metal, and they certainly put on one hell of a show! With all members engaging with the crowd throughout their whole set and Eva Sheldrake's emotionally raw vocals and screams, she really put her all into every lyric and delivered an amazing performance drawing in the crowd more and more with every line. Having recently supported BEX at her headline show in London and now Wargasm in Brighton, I am certain they are on to big things and another one to add to my ones to watch list for next year.
Next up was Karen Dió, all the way from Brazil, who has been on most of the UK tour dates of this tour. Having just been announced as support for Limp Bizkit next year, this small but mighty punk rocker is already on her way to big things. Her set was high energy, hyping up the crowd even more after Eville’s set and setting the tone for the rest of the evening. Starting off with ‘My World’ before leading into ‘Stupid’ and ‘Cut My Hair’ and merging into unreleased tracks ‘I Hope You Know It’s Not Me’ and ‘Betsy’, giving us a full range and insight into her full discography and leaving the crowd wanting more.
The stage lights started to flash and club anthems were played through the speakers before Wargasm came roaring out onto the stage. The crowd surfers started as soon as they set foot on stage alternating with circle pits and walls of death and they kept this energy up the whole night. Wargasm are an electronic rock duo that make ‘angry songs for sad people’. They well and truly did manage to combine nightclub and metal gig vibes into one evening making it a memorable one for sure. I don’t know what to expect going into the venue, but it certainly wasn’t that!
They started with their 2 most recent releases ‘Circle Pit’ and Bad Seed’ before diving headfirst into their 2023 album ‘Venom’ with ‘Ride the Thunder’ and ‘Death Rattle’. The rest of the setlist consisted of a good mix of songs off both their albums as well as many singles and well-known collabs. Half-way through their set, they were joined on stage by Harpy who was the support for their European shows. Harpy’s screams throughout ‘Bang Ya Head’ paired so perfectly with Milkie Way’s vocals while Sam Matlock, Stone Behzhadi (touring guitarist) and the rest of their crew continued to hype the crowd up. They jokingly played the intro of The Trooper by Iron Maiden before getting the crowd to jump and chant back all the lyrics of ‘D.R.I.L.D.O’. The crowd was super loud all evening, but the volume went off the charts for the final 2 songs ‘Spit.’ and ‘Do It So Good’ which ended with Sam Matlock crowd surfing around the room. They put on a truly electric performance, and I totally understand why they were chosen to support the likes of Korn, Babymetal and Poppy.