Review: Viagra Boys at Fremantle Prison

Viagra Boys at Fremantle Prison
w/ Private Function
Friday, January 23, 2026

The walls of Fremantle Prison have absorbed plenty over the decades, but the unruly chaos unleashed by Viagra Boys was something else entirely. Marking the Swedish band’s first visit to the west coast of Australia as part of their Infinite Anxiety tour, the prison was the perfect venue for the sardonic sextet, a fact not lost on the band as frontman Sebastian Murphy exclaimed, “They finally let us into Perth. And it’s in a fucking prison!”

It was not just the headliners that were up to no good, however. Opening act Private Function swaggered in as if they owned the joint and set the tone early with a burst of rowdy, good-humoured chaos. Frontman Chris Penney exemplified the Melbourne six-piece’s larrikin nature, smoking cigs and downing beers all the while never missing a breath to deliver his lyrics into the mic.

The beginning of the band’s set was fast as hell and included fan favourites Talking to Myself and Give War a Chance. Following this blistering start, Penney polled the audience on their favourite cheap cigarette brand and was subsequently answered with a Manchester Blue durry from the front row. Lighting up and taking a puff, he launched the group into the 80s hair-metal rock of Ready to Be Rich.

When not on stage, Penney was busy dismantling the fourth wall. For one song he was busy serving Jameson straight from the bottle to the front row, while during Koala he was amidst the pit, embracing punters to enact the song’s lyrics like “I want to put my arms around you, like a big koala.” It was not only Penney, however, that embraced the crowd. Towards the back end of the set, bassist Milla Holland handed over her instrument to clench the mic with both hands and lead the group through some of their most vitriolic works, such as Dumpster Diving Scrap Slut. While Holland’s vocals were unfortunately low in the mix, the excess of anger and energy in her movements more than sold the message.

Given the amount of self-irony in their lyrics and the constant audience interaction, it was hard at times to tell if the group was more a live band or more a work of performance art. While I’m sure they would be the first to tell me to fuck off if I said they were akin to “art”, one thing is sure: the announcement on Christmas Day of last year that this will be the group’s final tour means their unhinged anarchy on the Aussie live scene will be sorely missed.

With a celebratory and larrikin vibe well and truly alive across the venue, it was not long before the Viagra Boys took the stage. Launching headfirst into the muscular Man Made of Meat, the audience drowned out Sebastian Murphy’s opening utterances of “okay, alright” in a demonstration of their eagerness.

The band moved swiftly on, delving into the rockier side of their back catalogue. The Devo-esque Slow Learner leapt to action through Tor Sjödén’s relentless pounding of the skins and the gritty bass work of Henrik Höckert, while the slacker-rock of Waterboy and Punk Rock Loser got the mosh pogoing and allowed multi-instrumentalist Oskar Carls a chance to show off both his sax and guitar prowess.

Proceeding with pace, Linus Hillborg’s slinky bass ushered in Uno II, which led into Ain’t No Thief. Serving as the end of the first part of their set, the mood physically shifted in the crowd during this number due to the sheer intensity of the performance. Ushered in by Murphy’s wandering, dreamlike story of his teenage self at a house party, the entire band went up a gear, locking into the track’s pummelling disco beat, while the guitars and Elias Jungqvist on synth concocted an unwieldy mix of swirling and stabbing psychedelic textures that entranced the audience.

After a brief interlude, the group returned with the poppier Pyramid of Health, which segued into the high-energy, punk-rock anxiety of Troglodyte, setting off the first circle in the pit of the night. Always somewhere near the lip of the stage, Murphy proved a constant point of focus throughout the entire set. Wearing just his trademark black Adidas track bottoms and dark sunglasses, he seemed almost in a trance state, answerable to nothing but the sound around him, as he sauntered across the stage, casually dropping moves wherever he went.

One particularly memorable move came during the outro of ADD, where, as he swivelled his hips and placed his hands on the back of his head, he projectile spouted a swig from his can of beer back up into the air above him, only for the liquid to come back down and wash over his tatted belly. Despite the objectively gross nature of the manoeuvre, there was somehow a sensual gracefulness to it and something that only the frontperson of a rock band should dare to entertain.

Of equal commendation, Murphy’s singing on Medicine for Horses, a beautiful slow moment in an otherwise pulsating set, showed that the man has a solid set of pipes at his disposal. The moment soon passed, however, as pulsating early-breakout hit Sports picked the energy back up and saw numerous crowd surfers go over the top amidst a cloud of rising steam from the sweaty throng below them.

With the pace once again at full throttle, the most chaotic moment of the night was unleashed via an extended rave-up of Research Chemicals. With the rhythm section and guitars honing a krautrock-like passion for rhythmic rigidity, Carls pulled improv jazz-meets-post-punk shapes from his sax while Jungqvist abandoned his synths mid-song to pound a pair of bongos. And with the spirit of the drums slowly taking him over, Jungqvist moved ever closer to the front of the stage before finally launching himself into the crowd, bongos and all, in a moment of rock ‘n’ roll exaltation. With the jam seemingly self-perpetuating and gaining momentum, it finally found its release as Jungqvist made his way back to the stage, and the group left the stage.

Demanding more, the crowd was rewarded with an encore as the band returned to play their latest single, The Bog Body, before ending the night with older fan favourite Worms. Drawing the set full circle, from a man made of meat to the worms that will consume his body of flesh, the song’s universal reminder that “the same worms that eat me will someday eat you too” seemed uber-fitting given the venue: a home to housed convicts watched over and kept separate from society.  And with that, the band dropped their instruments and headed centre stage to link arms to thank the audience before their final departure.

As the audience made its way back through the main gates of the prison and back out into society, it was remarkable that rock and roll could still elicit such raw energy and passion from a crowd of people. Perhaps it is a biological necessity, something ingrained in our DNA and once unlocked by the spirit of the electric guitar, will never be put back into the box. While it’s too hard to truly ever know, one thing was made certain on the night: the Viagra Boys had no trouble getting it up when it mattered.

MICHAEL HOLLICK

Photos by Adrian Thomson