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Sat. Oct. 13 Earlier this year: GWAR said as they approached a Boston show: "We are finishing this last spate of shows as a tribute to fallen Scumdog Flattus Maximus, and will be playing as a four piece behind the screaming a ssault of Balsac,” says GWAR singer Oderus Orungus on the band’s web page. Flattus, aka Cory Smoot, died last November (pre-existing coronary heart disease). Continues Oderous,” In this way we shall give all the US bohabs ample chance to fall to their knees in a sobbing heap when confronted with the reality of Flattus’ departure…and a chance to say farewell. Then GWAR can move forward, and we shall.” And now GWAR - which plays the annual Rock and Shock Show at Worcester's Palladium Saturday Oct. 13 - says: It was a little less than a year ago that the world was rocked by the passing of Flattus Maximus, back to the cosmos from whence he came. And since that day fans of GWAR have wondered how the mighty overlords of GWAR would deal with the void it left within the band. GWAR responded the only way they knew how-by soldiering on-and continued to play as a four-piece. But from the very beginning of that phase, the quest began to find the new Scumdog that was in every way as magnificent as his predecessor. Today the members of GWAR are pleased to inform their legions of followers, and even more so their many enemies, that once again the band is whole, with the proclamation that long-lost cousin of Flattus, Pustulus Maximus, has officially joined the band in the position of lead guitarist, and will join with the group on their upcoming "Fate or Chaos" tour. Pustulus offered his first words to the press with the following, "At this point I have nothing to say to the press, even though I am talking to you. I will let my guitar speak for itself. But let me add that I am blood-sworn to honor the legacy of the great Flattus and indeed the whole Maximus tribe. I didn't come here to fuck around. HAIL FLATTUS!" But how did all of this come to pass? It was easy to get a quote from GWAR lead singer, Oderus Urungus:"Naturally we were devastated by the passing of Flattus. But we turned that grief into rage and set about the task of finding a new guitar player. The first thing we did was sound the mighty Horn of Hate, and alert all Scumdogs, scattered across the galaxy as they are, as to what had occurred. What people didn't know about Flattus was that was is part of a huge tribe of brutish warriors, The Maximus Clan. They are at the core of any Scumdog Legion worth its blood! Planet Maximus is just crawling with them!" Oderus farted, blowing a hole in the wall, and continued. "Many of the tribe had fought and even played in bands with Flattus, and we began to get messages from across the stars. The Scumdogs were coming! Coming to Earth to lay tracks on our new album, and pay tribute to the mighty Flattus. Soon the War-Barges of Maximus tribe members began to appear in Earth's orbit...and land outside our great temple! Bubonis, Infectitcus, Fartacus, and many more-all have participated in the creation of the songs that shall be on our new album, which will be out sometime next year. But it was not until the hulking form of Pustulus appeared at the studio door, bloody guitar in hand, that we knew we had our new member. Here was a being that was supposedly born with a guitar in his fist, which of course resulted in the death of his beloved mother, whose body he immediately devoured. If anyone can replace our beloved comrade, it is this foul creature. Because he can fucking shred." Little else is known about this being, other than that he has a skin condition where his face and feet are covered in painful pustules that can only be soothed by the application of savage metal, spoiled elephant semen or oral sex. Pustulus is also rumored to be half-deaf, which leads him to yell at everyone, which he does often, because he is convinced everyone in the band is ignoring him when actually he just can't hear what they are saying. It is not known whether he crashed his Scumship into Antarctica or wandered up from the depths of GWAR's Antarctic fortress - all that is known is that he is here, now, and is ready to ROCK. But GWAR fans won't have to wait until the tour to witness the ax-mastery of Pustulus.
Make sure to visit The A.V. Club http://www.avclub.com tomorrow to see Pustulus as he shreds for the first time with his Scumdog Brothers in GWAR on a very special song that no other band would play, because it is so fucking hard. Unless of course you are GWAR.
Backstory: Reminds me a bit of when I saw Metallica, first US date after founding bassist Cliff Burton had been killed in a bus crash and the band played in front of a graveyard scrim strewen with crosses. The show must go on, and if the show had fake blood and gore and violence before the reality kicked in, well, so be it. Let me take you back a bit - a little more than two decades, to the now-defunct Channel club in South Boston. First time I’d seen GWAR. Some of my thoughts back when … Before the show, in the connecting Necco Place, the red-haired woman beside me at the bar took off her jacket and revealed a mostly bare and bloodstained back. Either she'd recently been in a horrible accident or she was . . . GWAR Woman! She was GWAR Woman. In less than an hour, she was onstage sporting a bustier that made Madonna's look mild, swinging maces and axes, walloping and beheading various other GWAR members, all of it choreographed to a ferocious speed metal/punk rock soundtrack. Of course, she wasn't the only perpetrator; lead singer Orderus Urungus got in his share of hacks, too. It was an afternoon of blood 'n' gore 'n' a whole lot more: It was Alice Cooper times 10, your favorite splatter movie transposed to a rock 'n' roll setting, a sadomasochistic circus from hell, a decadent demi-monde populated by the same sort of amoral goon squad that ran wild in "The Road Warrior." It was also a lot like professional wrestling. Totally, Completely over the top. A place where "That's disgusting!" is uttered by people with wide grins on their faces. GWAR -- a 14-person conglomeration of musicians, dancers and art-school refugees from Richmond, Va. -- is more elaborately costumed than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is, however, unlikely that GWAR will spin off a line of action toys. Too many spikes and chains. Too much hardware. You know how theater people say that if there's a gun on the wall in the first act, you can bet it will be fired by the third? Well, with GWAR you can bet that if a character wanders onstage -- the pro-censorship "Granbo" in a wheelchair, a 10-foot human-chomping dinosaur, a dazed hippie -- he or she is going to be bleeding profusely by the end of his or her stint. Various GWAR folks gushed quarts of fake blood all over the stage and into the front rows, composed of folks only too willing to enjoy the massacre. This was one long, wet job. If I'm not mistaken, even Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett got his head lopped off -- at least that's what happened to a chap in a bald mask sporting a black T-shirt with the word "Oil" on it. Music? Well, GWAR's five musicians played songs such as "Vlad the Impaler," "Sick of You" "Maggots Are Falling Like Rain," "Bone Meal" and "Slaughterama." They're probably "about" what they seem to be about, but clear, articulate vocals are not really part of the plan; the music is a soundtrack for the mayhem. How nasty did it get? Well, for "Have You Seen Me?" GWAR trotted out two dancing milk cartons, one of which had a drawing of a child and the tag, "Have you seen me? Call 555-I'MDEAD." And one of the promorality crusaders GWAR trotted out ended up with a fate that was, shall we say, worse than death. For GWAR, it had to be a success. They packed the club, they got to exorcise a load of demons, they had fun on the extreme fringes and they didn't get busted for obscenity, as they did in North Carolina earlier this year. They even got to protest their own show. Before the curtain lifted, several GWAR members paraded about the stage with signs like "Make Love, Not GWAR" and "You Call This Art?" The question most often asked about GWAR is: Would the music make it without the theatrics? The answer is, no, but the rejoinder is, so what? Lead singer Odorous Urungus and other GWAR provocateurs submerge themselves in a splatter-rock shtick that wants to rub you wrong. What's it all about? Basically, a mind-warp: Rock theater taken over the edge, ultra-violence and rock-horror shtick played up to the max. For all its bloodlust, it's not all that substantive -- most of the characters brought onstage lose life or limb -- but it is a smile-inducing, perverse spectacle. They're sure to ruffle your PC feathers -- even as the spiky, breast-plated GWAR Woman often asserted dominance over the men-creatures -- but they're even more sure to make you cringe and recoil at their audacity. It is, remember, a passageway into overkill city. As time goes by, some veteran rock bands add new chords. The hardcore punk/metal band GWAR adds buckets of blood. "Alice Cooper and Monty Python are two of my biggest influences," Brockey told me. GWAR's sound is an agitated punk/metal throb; it's a sound track to the pro-wrestling-like skits. Straw men in the form of conservative religious and political leaders often bear the brunt of the attack. Is there a message behind the mayhem? "We do want to leave it up to the viewer in a lot of ways," says Brockey. "Going to art school and listening to our professors, I hated being told why I should like things. But GWAR does have a deeper meaning." You just have to sort your way through the metallic slabs and gore to get there. Brockey suggests GWAR's slash-and-slay style is meant to attack society's rampant hypocrisy. "We are reacting to what we see. We live in a violent society; therefore we're going to reflect that. . . . We're going after the sacred cows. It's a neo-pagan event where you can work out your destructive energy in a nondestructive way." Is it art? What is art to GWAR? "Art, at its best," says Brockey, "forces a change in people's psyches, those who pay to see it. Is it subversive? Revolutionary? It's a total categorical rejection of a lot of elements of society. . . . There's a great self-parodying aspect too, turning the magnifying glass on ourselves and music that spawns us." Lest we get too highbrow, Brockey is happy to drag us back into the sewer. The new stage show "revolves around a giant toilet that we spend the show trying to unclog," he says. "The toilet becomes the narrative device for the propulsion of the set. It will end in a battle -- it always ends in a battle -- with the most gigantic rubber monsters we've ever put on stage at one time." But is this just lowest-common-denominator schlock-rock? "We like to cover all the bases," says Brockey. "We like to start with the lowest-common denominator and work our way up. . . . We were just a bunch of crazy art-school dropouts. This exploded in our faces and exceeded all our wildest dreams." To date, they've sold about 700,000 albums. Rest assured GWAR has not been tamed. "We have a Princess Diana doll," says Brockey. "We're bringing her back one more time." It's not just an exercise in bad taste, stresses Brockey: "The system of royalty is antiquated. People get smashed every day in car accidents and nobody cares. Her driver was drunk, she was riding without her seat belt, and Elton sings the {expletive} song and goes on tour." Tix: $25. Also on the bill, which starts at 5 p.mm are DevilDriver, Legacy of Disorder, Cancer Bats, They Will Be Done, Goddamn Zombie and more TBA. 261 Main St., Worcester, 508-797-9696 www.thepalladium.net |
