WARGASM + JAR OF BLIND FLIES + BONES ATE ARFA @ BRIGHTON CHALK – 30TH JUNE 2026
Wargasm Turn Chalk Into a Sweaty, Sonic War Zone
Wargasm arrive in Brighton to lay waste to Chalk. I’ve mostly only seen them at festivals before, so I’m relishing the opportunity to see them in a comparatively small indoor venue. However, before Wargasm take the stage, there are two support bands for us to experience, both of whom are Brighton-based.
The first of these is Bones Ate Arfa, who I had the privilege of seeing play at my local pub in Horsham a year ago. They blew me away when I saw them then, but to say that they’ve come on in leaps and bounds doesn’t even begin to cover the musical maturity that they’ve acquired in that time.
They come on to a quite apocalyptic-sounding intro track before Bones starts the picked guitar intro to Vineyard, from the Just Bananas EP, which is sonically slow and lumbering like a wounded beast. Bassist Arfa sings lead and harmonises surprisingly sweetly with Bones before the latter essays a deliberately shambolic-sounding guitar solo.
The EP’s title track, Just Bananas, is faster, with Bones and Arfa sharing the vocals. Drummer 8 gets into the photo pit to play cowbell, then walks the length of the bar doing the same. Arfa reveals that he has “fuck Reform” written on the back of his bass, which is nice.
Bones sings the unreleased SODA whilst playing a very definitely un-shambolic guitar solo. Asbestos is one of the first songs that they wrote and is an utter riff monster. It has some delicate but psychedelic-sounding guitar before the band let loose with an absolute sonic apocalypse.
Wings is apparently a new song, but a lot of people seem to know it. For some reason they imitate The Beatles’ spoken voices at the beginning. They finish with Akimbo People, from the EP of the same name. It kicks off with another stunning riff, gets much faster towards the end, and the band receive a hero’s reception from the audience.
Bones bids us farewell with “fuck Elon Musk. Fuck Donald Trump”, and you really can’t say fairer than that.
Jar Of Blind Flies have probably the best band name that I’ve heard all year. They’re another three-piece but are probably a bit more on the punky side than Bones Ate Arfa. Vocalist and guitarist Maddy Jarvis’s singing is quite screamy, and drummer Marley Perez screams as well. Good for them. I understand that it’s quite therapeutic.
Things kick off with Not Your Baby, which was a recent single. Plastic Boy, meanwhile, is in 3/4, with an almost acoustic guitar sound allied to a very punchy bass. Crawl Back Inside, from their album Mia, is faster and sounds oddly like The Swell Maps. Little Bo Creep has a slow but powerful riff which soon speeds up. It has no vocals. Perhaps it should have some.
Marley Perez’s stage announcements are unintelligible. Maddy handles all of the vocals but doesn’t speak. The band’s sound is very reminiscent of Nirvana’s loud-quiet-loud approach, which is fine, but even Kurt Cobain admitted that they’d nicked that from the Pixies. If you missed the early 1990s, this is what it sounded like.
There are times when I wonder whether Wargasm are having an identity crisis. Over the course of a gig, they’re a rock band, they’re a techno band, and sometimes they’re somewhere in between. I guess what it really means is that they have a flexible approach to the presentation of their music. It also means that when the band’s principals, Milkie Way — I believe her mother may know her as Rachel — and Sam Matlock want to be unencumbered by their instruments, they can be.
Thus, for opener Backyard Bastards, we get the Wargasm rock band experience. Sam is in the photo pit on guitar, Milkie is on bass, Edison Hunter is on additional guitar, and Adam Breeze is on drums. Adam is also a studio member of the band, incidentally.
However, things can change in an instant. For the next song, Vigilantes, Milkie and Sam have ditched their instruments, Edison Hunter is nowhere to be seen, and Adam Crilly is onstage on ‘electronics’, which I think really means a laptop and a synth.
Such change-arounds happen frequently, which means that there is always something going on and an interesting flexibility and breadth to the band’s sound.
Wargasm released a live album in April entitled Live In London 2025, and I honestly believe that this is the best way to experience the band short of actually seeing them onstage. The album contains a great deal of the band’s current set and captures the atmosphere of a Wargasm gig. You can virtually smell the sweat coming out of the speakers and feel the floor vibrate as the crowd bounce.
Fukstar is one of the best tracks on the album, and it is an absolute standout tonight. The song elicits the night’s first crowd surfer. I’m sure that it’s not just a coincidence.
Shin Venom is a particularly techno moment, whilst Never Gonna Get It calls for the start of a revolution. You actually feel that it could happen.
If Wargasm have a classic, Bang Ya Head is probably it. There’s an ace guitar solo, and the song title’s instruction is widely and wildly followed. Sam briefly wears Arfa’s military cap and throws it into the crowd. I bet Arfa was saving that!
Sam and Edison crowd surf, so things must be drawing to a close. After Do It So Good, the band barely leave the stage before the encore of Salma Hayek.
This is one of the most energetic gigs that I’ve seen for a long time: simultaneously fearsome and exhilarating. Unfortunately, I have to catch a train, but after the gig Wargasm are doing a DJ set at Dust.
I bet that was awesome!
WORDS: MARK KELLY PHOTOS: CRIS WATKINS
