HOT WAX // SIDNEY & MATILDAS, SHEFFIELD

HotWax Turn Sidney & Matilda’s Into a Sweaty Grunge Furnace

⭐⭐⭐⭐(4/5)

Hot Wax @ Sidney & Matildas, Sheffield

Photocredit: John Hayhurst

On a very wet Sheffield evening, Sidney & Matilda’s became a pressure cooker of sweat, distortion and barely contained chaos.

Support came in the form of Jeanie and the White Boys, who delivered a set that felt thrillingly unhinged, it was equal parts ragged glam, punk blues and performative mischief.

It quickly became clear the band were running on fumes. Having been up all night with zero sleep to speak of, they stumbled onto the Sidney & Matilda’s stage with a strung-out energy that bled into the performance and gave the room a slightly uneasy edge.

Jeanie led from the front in a state that hovered somewhere between defiant and barely holding it together. During songs she repeatedly violently shook her head as if trying to clear a brutal hangover, while the rest of the band remained eerily still, eyes glazed and expressions hollow — the lead guitarist in particular looking like he was playing on pure muscle memory alone.

Jeanie herself is an impossible performer to ignore — a charismatic, snarling presence who shifts from wry banter to primal howls with the ease of someone who treats every song like a personal manifesto. At several points she dropped to her knees mid-song, openly admitting she was fighting to keep herself upright — and, at one point, to keep herself from being sick. From the front row, it was a little unsettling, but also oddly compelling: a reminder that this wasn’t a polished performance but a raw, slightly chaotic purge. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t comfortable — but it was impossible to look away, setting the tone perfectly for the volatility that followed.

From the second HotWax swaggered onto the stage at Sidney & Matilda’s, it was obvious who was in charge. The Sheffield venue was already rammed, but any remaining resistance was flattened within seconds as the trio launched headfirst into a set that refused to let the room breathe. This was controlled chaos: sweat-soaked, snarling and unrelenting.

Frontwoman Tallulah Sim-Savage was magnetic, firing out grunge-slashed riffs while slipping between two microphones to warp certain lines into something hazy and disorientating. Her vocals cut between venomous and vulnerable with ease. Alongside her, Lola Sam locked the room into a groove with thick, funky basslines, jumping in on backing vocals that landed with eerie precision. Behind it all, Alfie Sayers attacked the kit with gleeful force, holding the whole thing together while threatening to tear it apart.

Walls of noise dominated the set, collapsing into heavy breakdowns before blooming into slower, vocal-led moments that felt almost trance-like. The band ran through their 2025 album Hot Shock almost in full, save for ‘Lights On’, while still finding space for crowd favourites ‘Tell Me Everything’s Alright’ and ‘Paint It Nice’.

Rather than easing the crowd in, HotWax went straight for the jugular. Early cuts like ‘Hard Goodbye’, ‘Wanna Be a Doll’ and ‘Tell Me Everything’s Alright’ landed first, front-loading the set with their most anthemic, angst-ridden material. From there, the energy spiralled inward, pulling the audience into something darker and more hypnotic. The closing stretch — ‘A Thousand Times’ and ‘Chip My Teeth for You’ — felt intimate without losing intensity, with the band sharing the story behind one of their earliest songs and flashing their matching tattoos like a quiet badge of honour.

The encore was where things got truly clever. ‘Pharmacy’ arrived stripped back, letting Tallulah’s ethereal vocals hover in the air before ‘One More Reason’ crept in on a slinking bassline, its repeated “I hate, I love” mantra sounding more unhinged each time around. Just when the crowd thought they had their footing, the band slammed into ‘Rip It Out’, turning the room into a chanting, heaving mass — before snapping seamlessly back into ‘One More Reason’ to close things out.

When it was over, Sidney & Matilda’s felt wrecked, sweat-soaked and stunned, like a room still ringing after impact. HotWax left Sheffield flattened, smiling, and begging for more.

Words & Photos - John Hayhurst