Live Report: Viagra Boys rock hard at Electric Picnic 2025

Whether they’re on stage or bursting their way through your speakers, Viagra Boys are one the premier acts in rock right now. And as Electric Picnic winds down on Sunday eve, the Swedish punks are determined to send everyone home in chaos.

They kick off with ‘Man Made of Meat’, the opener from their latest (and most annoyingly spelt) album viagr aboys. It gorges with grotesque and corporeal imagery that runs through much of VB's work, lampooning capitalism with references to your mother's Only Fans and slobs drifting around supermarkets on electric scooters.

Absurdity and aggression collide once more on the ‘The Bog Body’, while ‘Waterboy’ swaggers with its synth line wailing through the tent.

‘Sports’ meanwhile, welcomes a communal roar as a giant tennis ball spins onscreen. The crowd chants every banal “sport” the band lists, including but not limited to: volleyball, baseball, basketball, smoking dope, online shopping, not picking up the phone and wearing sunglasses to bed.

Viagra Boys at Electric Picnic. Photo: Patrik Meier

The sound is relentless. Fuzzed-out bass and pounding drums build the foundation, while jagged guitars, saxophone, synths and flutes swirl into hypnotic layers. It’s chaotic, tight and muscular all at once, and the technicolour light show is one of the best I’ve seen.

At the centre of it is Sebastian Murphy. Beer-bellied and approximately 99% tattooed, he struts, staggers, and rolls around the stage. He’s a deranged anti-frontman of sorts, and at one point insists he’s lost his voice. He hasn’t, but the crowd is nonetheless happy to take over, shouting back every word of ‘Uno II’ (a track written from the perspective of the frontman’s dog during a visit to the vet).

They close with ‘Research Chemicals’, a deep cut from 2016. It sparks the moshiest pit of the weekend, and judging by the grins on the faces walking out of the tent, is worth every bruise and lost phone.