By the time Heartworms stalk onto the stage at King Tut’s, the air is already thick with anticipation—possibly sweat, possibly dread. After all, Jojo Orme doesn’t deal in the pedestrian or the polite. She’s the kind of frontwoman who could have you spellbound with a whisper and then tear your head off with a wail before you’ve had time to blink. And tonight, that’s exactly what she does.

Fresh off the release of Glutton for Punishment—one of the year’s most ferocious debuts—Orme and her band take their positions with the quiet confidence of people who know they’re about to flatten the room.

They open the set with the album’s instrumental intro, a brief moment of eerie calm before Just To Ask a Dance kicks in, complete with perfectly synchronised moves. Who says style and substance can’t share a stage?

Heartworms operate on a knife’s edge between post-punk precision and industrial ferocity, with the band shifting seamlessly between controlled chaos and eerie serenity.

The dynamics are razor-sharp: one moment a whispered, almost ghostly vocal, the next an unhinged, full-throated howl that feels like it could shatter glass. Orme doesn’t just sing these songs—she delivers them, each lyric weighted like a weapon, each pause as tense as a held breath.

And then comes Mad Catch. The band drops into absolute silence, leaving the crowd stranded in a moment of stillness. At first, the murmur of bar chatter drifts through the venue, a reminder of the real world beyond this fever dream of a set. But soon, as if hypnotised, the room falls silent. Orme seizes the moment with some spoken word—an intense, almost theatrical display that sends a shiver through the assembled bodies before the trip-hop beats of Extraordinary Wings come crashing in.

By the time Warplane detonates, there’s no question that Heartworms are in complete control. The drum machine sets the pulse, the band drive it forward like a well-oiled war machine, and Orme commands the chaos with a cool, almost sinister authority.

The night ends with Smugglers Adventure, a spectral, subdued closer that lingers in the air like the last breath of a ghost.

With the haunting lyric, “I don’t have a chance to ask for a dance from you. I’m so shy, it pains me to ask you to save me too”

It’s a moment of eerie beauty—a final, knowing whisper before the band disappears into the night.

Words: Fran Tamburini & Angela Canavan

Images: Rose McEnroe