Wargasm’s new record, EXPLICIT: The MIXXXtape, is a chaotic, metal, headbanging triumph for the group. Milkie Way and Sam Matlock have a chemistry that can only be described as “the war of the gasm.” Watching them finish each other’s sentences, saying the same things at the same time and listening to their fun banter explains why this project has been a success and why they are the two perfect people to keep their vision going forward.

mxdwn: Hi, my name is Eve Pierpont and I’m the editor for mixdown’s music feature section. I’m here today with Milkie Way and Sam Matlock from Wargasm. Hi Sam. Hi Milkie. So, do you think that rock and roll has lost its original essence? Do you think that it will ever find its way back? What do you think would have to happen for the genre to be given life again?

Milkie Way: Every genre is a little bit dead, you know, I don’t think anything fits in a kind of genre box now-a-days anyway. So I think to say that rock roll is dead is—

Sam Matlock: It’s a lot less racist, misogynistic, and no one’s having parties with little girls in hotel rooms anymore. So, I’d say that’s an advantage of new rock and roll. No, it’s different. It’s changed. Kind of, fuck a lot of the old shit’s dead. You know, this is nothing to do with loving the royals and what’s going on in our country at the moment—fuck the royals, fuck the monarchy—but the first thing you say when the king is dead is long live the king. You bring in the new wave, you bring in the new era and you don’t need the time or the moment or the movement to die down, and that’s what we are doing. That’s what’s always happened. You know, I fucking doubt Chuck Berry knew anything about half the bands I grew up listening to, and I doubt half the bands I grew up listening to know anything about us. It’s kind of the way it always is. Cycle moves, you know.

mxdwn: “Fukstar” seems to send a loud message to the super wealthy who believe that they are “Gods.” Do you think the monetary mentality that people have after becoming famous has negatively affected the music industry and what genres artists decide to go into?

MW: What, you mean MGK deciding to do a punk rock album because he thinks he can profit off it?

SM: He is profiting off of it.

MW: I mean it’s working, he is profiting off of it and people are buying it. I’m not going to blame him for that.

SM: Then there’s someone like Kanye, whose kind of got his own shit going on. Spent like, even after fame I think with access to bigger resources, I think he’d done better work, you know, after he made it. To be honest.

MW: Yeah. I think it depends on the person and what they do with the money, you know, it’s not a blanket. You can’t say the same for everyone.

SM: So many artists, I mean My Chemical Romance, Danger Days and Black Parade look better and sound better because they had the budget to play with I guess.

MW: And if they had more budget, they could have released Conventional Weapons, but they couldn’t because they didn’t have that budget. So, maybe we should give the right more money.

SM: They probably wouldn’t cause it wasn’t an album.

MW: It was great. It could’ve been. It was going to be an album. I talked about it on stage the other night.

mxdwn: Gotcha. So, where did “Lola’s Voicemail” come from? Is it an actual voicemail?

SM: Yeah. From Lola {laughs}. Lola is one of our co-producers, co-writers, collaborators, whatever you wanna call ’em; some of the people that we like to work with, is a very sweet daughter called Lola.

MW: She’s the biggest Wargasm fan in the world.

SM: Yeah. Which I dunno what that—

MW: Dunno what that says about her or—

SM: What her teenage years are gonna be like for him as a father {laughs} but I think it’s a hint maybe he’s gonna have to deal with some stuff. Just thought it was quite sweet, quite funny. Skits and things like that I guess more of a hip-hop world kind of vibe. That’s something we draw a lot of inspiration from. So, we thought it’d be a nice little like Easter egg in a few years or something.

mxdwn: Awesome. I thought that was kind of cool how you put that in there. Just curious how the decision to name a song after Salma Hayek came about.

MW: Well, I just rewatched From Dusk Till Dawn, that definitely helped. And also, you know, we wanted to look at the idea of Salma Hayek and the idea of James Dean and you know—

SM: It’s less about actually, I mean it’s not about those people at all.

MW: At the end, it kind of circles to something—

SM: Salma Hayek is a metaphor.

MW: We used her as a metaphor.

SM: Yeah, that’s right.

MW: That’s right.

SM: It’s just a metaphor. It was just to pick an actress’s name and you know, they’re a rich, good-looking person that becomes a metaphor. You could pick any actress’ name. As Milkie said she just watched From Dust Till Dawn, so that was kind of where that one went. I mean, Salma’s also done some awesome stuff. So it’s kind of fun using someone as an analogy that you also think is a total fucking badass.

mxdwn: Yes, definitely. Where do you want to take the band in the future? If you have any future plans?

MW: Big stages, bigger stages, the biggest stages.

SM: Yeah. We’ve done some quite big stages in the states and then some quite big stages at like festivals in Europe. One festival in Tokyo let us headline a stage, which was cool. You got these guys going like, you know, “where’re your lights, where’s your backdrop, where’s all your stuff?” We don’t actually—

MW: We don’t have any of those things.

SM: We don’t have any of that yet.

MW: We have a backdrop, but it’s like this size in comparison to all the stages.

SM: I’d like to, it would be nice to go somewhere that allows us maybe a bigger of a budget. And then we could put on the show that we want to put on or see how it grows or, you know, maybe work with some more mental people. I mean, if we get the budget, then I guess we can circle back to that second question in a few years and see if, you know, does the money fuck up the art. You can look us in the eye and tell us yes, you fucked up.

mxdwn: No, no. I have a feeling you guys won’t. So, then kind of going off of that, how did it feel when you saw yourselves on multiple new bands to watch lists?

MW: I like it. I like it, but I don’t like it when they put us on the new metal ones because then people are like, they’re not nu metal. And I’m like, I agree with you. I think that there’s better bands that people could put on this list, but don’t come at us for that.

SM: No, we just dropped a new fucking metal song. What are you chatting?

MW: We’re not a nu metal band though. Having a new metal song—

SM: None of the nu metal bands these days are nu metal bands because it’s new metal. It was new for metal at the time. Now it’s not fucking new. If you sound like a band from the noise, you’re not nu metal. You’re just like noise metal.

MW: Just metal.

SM: It’s nice to be on it, it doesn’t feel like a new band to us I don’t think. Because obviously we’ve been doing it for four years now, so it’s always a bit strange when someone’s like, go check out this great new thing and you’re like, I’ve been living and breathing this every day for four years. When you get to like, you know, 1400 plus days working on something, it starts to feel a bit like it’s always been there or it’s old. For me it feels like it’s always been there, which is nice. I think maybe when it feels like it’s old, that’s when you gotta worry.

mxdwn: Yeah, I could totally see that. Who has been each of your favorite artists or groups you’ve giggled with? Who would you like to work with in the future?

MW: I mean Limp Bizkit is just the best band in the world to tour with and to see play every night.

SM: Yeah, that was cool.

MW: It’s pretty good.

SM: We got to hang out in LA, we got to hang out with this guy called Jason Butler from Fever 333, and that was pretty cool. I really like the way he speaks. I really like his lyrics. Love his performance, love his vocal style. I’d like to take a look for it myself. So that was pretty fun. Hopefully it recycles back and we’ll get to work on something in the future.

MW: We play some shows sometimes in the UK with this band called, would you call them bands? Group. They’re called Talking Horror and they’re fucking mental {laughs}. They kind of feel like a really bad acid trip, but with extra drum and bass bits and guitars now apparently.

SM: Yeah. They’re cool.

MW: They’re pretty cool.

SM: Their format live is kind of like Prodigy, if that makes sense. You know, so like vocal, a lot of this like DJ stuff, but then it’s also got—

MW: They’ve decided to add instruments which makes it even more chaotic. I like it.

SM: Loads of people we’d like to work with. I’d love to do something with, our first records out now, when it comes to the second one I’d like to work with Trent and Atticus from Trent and Atticus Ross and all that. It’d be nice to see what they’re up to like M.I.A or like a cool rapper or something like that.

MW: We also saw Poppy. She was pretty sick. She gave me very much Jonathan Davis energy and I don’t think it was just cause she was wearing a kilt.

MK: She’s kind of like—

SM: The pink-haired girl from Lazytown.

MW: {Laughs} Yeah, she does have the same hair.

SM: Lazy Davis Jonathan town, J-town. No, she’s really called Poppy. Don’t worry. We don’t need to get into semantics. It’d just be nice to hang out with people that, it’s always nice as musicians to hang out with people that you think are cool, like going for a beer with them is great but sitting in a room and hitting some keyboards and playing some guitars.

mxdwn: I read that a few years ago, you guys decided to incorporate synthesizers into your music. Can you tell me a little bit about how that came to be? Do you feel like you have the pocket that you’re aiming for or do you want to evolve your sound further?

SM: I think, we’ve always done that a little bit just cause movie soundtracks and sound designs are cool and fun. I think it’s like when they put the UK into lockdown as it was, it kind of—we are a product of a moment and not having access to a drummer, not having access to like proper instruments and stuff like that, just having like a guitar and interface and then like a little keyboard, that’s kind of when the sound expanded, is when we got tracks like “Backyard Bastards” where we’d program drums and shit like that and editing became more of a thing. The laptop became like a real instrument for a lot of people I think throughout the pandemic. I don’t think we’ll ever be satisfied with where it’s going because if we do get satisfied where it’s going, what’s the fucking point. The fun thing is pushing it and enjoying it and seeing how it goes. I write for some other people as well and it’s quite fun when you are like, oh shit, I’m now probably one of London’s better people to breakbeats and shit now, you know, just cause you spend so long doing it, which is kind of cool.

mxdwn: Definitely. Milkie, I read in a Kerrang! interview that girls would come up to you after shows in the states and say that they’d never seen a woman play guitar on stage before. I do believe you’re definitely an inspiration in the scene of female musicians right now. How do you plan to take this new platform to change that idea? Do you think we can change that idea?

MW: Yeah, it was really bizarre to me. It was when I was actually working as a session musician, people would come up to me and say that to me. So, I’m really excited to take our band—what we’re doing now to the states and kind of show them an even more wild way of being on stage and like being able to be a woman on stage. I think there’s definitely room for change and I think we’re definitely capable of change 100%. I mean the scene in the UK with women is just absolutely thriving and across the border as well. We can absolutely change and there’s the people there for it. We just need the support behind it.

SM: There’s other stuff you do as well mate, like merchandise not always just being the same old unisex for blokes.

MW: Yeah we’ve made—

SM: Tank tops are what we call them.

MW: Baby tees. I love baby tees. Yeah. Stuff like incorporating people in every side of the project is important, you know, behind the scenes and on stage.

SM: We’re pretty militant about balancing our team to be honest as well. Like, the idea having the same fucking blokes in a band seem pretty scary to me. I’ve done it before and it’s like, ugh, not again. We always try and make sure there’s like a semi-representative gender balance in the band. It just makes for a nicer dynamic, I think when the team is balanced.

MW: Yeah, definitely.

SM: You know, you don’t go and play a video game where like every fucking person on a team is like playing role of the tank. Everyone has different skills and different walks of life and coming from different backgrounds, different bodies, different upbringings allows you a different unique set of abilities that you can bring to a team.

mxdwn: Love that. How do you guys approach writing your songs?

MW: It usually starts with a riff that you’ve sung into your voice notes on the street.

SM: Normally have thoughts creeping, or maybe something triggers them, but subconscious things, you don’t really know what triggers something. You get a lot of like lyric or sentences like bouncing around in your head. Then eventually it starts to snap to a tempo in your head and then like a riff or like a note or a chord like builds up behind it. Then when you come to put it—start to flesh it out together and just bounce back and forth, sometimes it’s one that I’ll take the reins on. Sometimes it’s one that I’ll throw this like little spark out there that Milkie will take the reins on it. Which is cool because it’s two people, it’s like the duality of two different sides of life. It’s the war of the gasm. So I guess you gotta have—if there’s five tracks you gotta have, like you do two and I do two and we do one together. There always has to be that kind of bounce. Otherwise it’s gonna lose what the project’s about. It’s not one person’s bit sung by two people. It’s two distinct parties—

MW: fighting each other—

SM: fighting each other, talking over each other, also complimenting each other.

mxdwn: Awesome. That’s so great. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. It has been a real pleasure.

Live Photos by Vivianne Navarrete