Music

Declaring GWAR

Your favorite bloody art stars come to town

A A A Comments By John Freeman Thursday, Nov 23 2006

GWAR is not so much a band as an art project that has gone completely out of control and spilled out across America in a squirting, blood-soaked, corpse-flinging onslaught of alien metal mayhem.

Alien Metal Mayhem: GWAR

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GWAR performs Saturday, November 25, at Gypsy Tea Room with The Red Chord.

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In fact, GWAR actually started around 1985 as a project by a bunch of deranged Virginia art students intent on creating the most disgustingly entertaining live rock show ever witnessed. Assuming the identities of repulsive space creatures hell-bent on enslaving and destroying the poor mortals of Earth, GWAR has left no sacred cow unslaughtered. Past shows have included such mind-blowing and stomach-churning spectacles as lead "singer" Oderus Urungus ripping the spine out of a priest and showering the audience with the accompanying fluids, and eviscerating George Bush and several other celebrities and political figures. GWAR shows are generally awash with a Muppets-meets-Manson aesthetic: cartoon carnage that really defies explanation. There are simulations of every bodily fluid one could possibly imagine being showered across the stage and audience like a mist tent at a satanic rave. It's kind of like a Gallagher show but instead of a watermelon being smashed with a sledgehammer, it is the head of Arnold Schwarzenegger or some other public figure ripe for lampooning. While their music might be less than memorable, their live shows have to be seen to be believed. Your concertgoer's résumé will never be complete unless there is at least one GWAR show listed between Green Day and Fugazi. So when you attend this show, bring a date, bring an umbrella and bring an appetite for blood, guts and good, old-fashioned, fluid-soaked outer space heavy metal.

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