Still throwing guts around, but listening with their ears

After two decades of costume shock-rock and 20-foot dinosaurs, Gwar are finally putting some effort into their music

Wednesday, 25 July 2007

For the past 20 years, Gwar has been drenching the world in fake blood, guts, and urine. It’s almost frightening to think about, but in a era when most bands put out maybe two albums and get a few years the limelight tops, the aging shock-metal band has yet to throw in the blood-soaked towel. According to vocalist Oderus Urungus, there simply isn’t any other job description he could fill.

“I am Gwar,” he announces over the phone. “I have to be Gwar. No-one else can do Gwar … . We’ve set the standard for theatrical shock-rock. A lot of bands are doing it and have done it, but nobody has ever taken it to the extreme that Gwar does.”

For the uninitiated, Gwar uphold monster personas onstage, wearing extravagant, ghoulish costumes and boasting names like “Beefcake the Mighty” and “Balsac the Jaws of Death.” They claim to have comefrom the planet Scumdogia to “fillet our genitals,” and, at any given show, they will gleefully spray fake bodily fluids all over the crowds. Of course, the fans love every minute of it, which Oderus understands as a supply-demand relationship between audiences and the band.

“I would’ve expected [Gwar] to have died a long time ago,” Urungus says before switching into character to correct himself. “Actually, we expected to escape the planet Earth years and years ago, but probably the bottom line is that we give people something that no other band does. People of all ages love to go see Gwar.
“Recently, I was introduced to some fans; it was a dad who brought his kid and also his mom to the show,” he continues. “So we had three generations of Gwar fans at one show, all covered in splooge.”

Things haven’t all been sunshine and bodily fluids for the band, however—they’ve gone through multiple line-up shuffles, and the band’s just pulling themselves out of the nosedive they experienced in the ’90s, when they were widely seen as a joke. With the world’s attention slipping and the band on the rocks, Gwar committed perhaps their most shocking move yet: taking their detractors seriously.

“Critics were always ragging on Gwar, saying ‘Oh, [the band]’s a big joke; they don’t take the music seriously, and they can’t play their instruments,’?” Urungus explained. “That really always used to piss us off, because I defy anyone to jam as hard as [Gwar] does, especially when being attacked by a 20-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex. What we did was decide to really listen to the critics, and challenge ourselves—as intergalactic rock stars—to start writing some records that were a little more musically ambitious.”

By taking a stab at improving their music, Gwar received renewed interest, scoring a co-headlining spot on this year’s Sounds of the Underground tour, and releasing a retrospective DVD, Blood Bath and Beyond, and new album, Beyond Hell, in 2006. With a revived sense of relevance, the band’s existence remains safe. Not that Urungus can see any other future for himself.

“It’s Gwar or nothing at this point,” he states in a rare slip of character. “When I was younger, I thought bands would be born, have a few records and then they’d die, but the older [Motorhead’s] Lemmy gets, the more I realize that we can keep doing this for as long as the body will obey.”

-->