WARGASM are back with “Swallow“, a new three minute and two second blast that follows “Get Down“, their first single since signing with Hopeless Records. If “Spit.” introduced the band’s particular brand of electronic metal chaos to a wider audience, “Swallow” takes that formula somewhere considerably more filthy.
The band describe the track as the “hot cousin” of “Spit.“, and their own description leaves very little room for interpretation. Inspired by Peaches and her famous invitation to “fuck the pain away“, WARGASM see the song as a soundtrack for mistakes, desire, bad decisions and the need for human contact in what they call “this hell of a century“. It is, in other words, very much a WARGASM song.
Released on 23 September, “Swallow” follows “Get Down“, which marked the beginning of the band’s relationship with Hopeless Records. That track has already become a fan favourite, reportedly picking up close to 500,000 streams during its first three months.
For Milkie Way and Sam Matlock, genre boundaries have never been particularly useful. Their music pulls together metal, industrial electronics, punk, rave, glitch pop and the darker end of alternative music, often with the subtlety of a brick through a nightclub window. That mixture has become central to their identity, but it is their live shows that have helped turn the duo into one of the more talked about names in contemporary alternative music.
Their rise has been anything but quiet.
After early tracks including “Spit.“, “Salma Hayek“, “Rage All Over” and “Scratchcard Feeling“, WARGASM released “EXPLICIT: THE MIXXXTAPE” in 2022, attracting attention from artists including Jonathan Davis of Korn and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit. Durst subsequently brought the duo on tour in the United States, exposing them to considerably larger audiences.
Their 2023 debut album, “VENOM“, pushed that sound further, with tracks such as “Bang Ya Head” featuring Fred Durst, “Do It So Good” and “Modern Love” moving freely between heavy guitars, electronic production, punk attitude and club energy.
That willingness to collide different worlds is probably the biggest reason for the fuss around WARGASM. They have found audiences in metal, punk, alternative and electronic circles without really belonging exclusively to any of them. They have shared stages with artists including Slipknot, BABYMETAL, YUNGBLUD and Limp Bizkit, while their increasingly prominent festival appearances have pushed them further beyond the British underground where the story began.
There is also an important element of confrontation in what they do. WARGASM have never presented themselves as a polite alternative band waiting for their turn. The songs are deliberately excessive, the live shows are designed to be physical, and Milkie Way and Sam Matlock have built a visual and musical identity around the idea that alternative music should still have some danger in it.
That does not mean everybody loves them. Quite the opposite. Their deliberately abrasive approach has produced plenty of criticism alongside the enthusiasm, which is hardly surprising for a band operating somewhere between a mosh pit and a rave at two in the morning.
But that reaction is part of what makes WARGASM interesting.
