Dave Brockie and Oderus Urungus

If Oderus Urungus were to write an obituary for Dave Brockie, no doubt he would fill it with tasteless jokes about how much his music sucked, how idiotic his fans were and what sexual position he was crushed in while he died screaming. But like nearly everyone else in the world, I don't have the wit or the fearlessness to make you laugh about something as awful as the news that Brockie and Urungus died this week at the age of 50 and 43 billion, respectively.



I will stand on my desk and say that GWAR is one of the greatest metal bands ever. Call it hyperbolic or overemotional, and maybe it is a fanatical thing to say about a band whose music was fine at best. But metal is best enjoyed from the stage and not from your home speakers, and no band ruled the stage like GWAR. Sure, Mastodon and Neurosis write better songs. But who would you rather see in the flesh?

Flesh was one of the only things you were guaranteed at a GWAR show. Sometimes it was Justin Bieber's, the Pope's, the President's, a Dictator's or Jesus Christ of Nazareth's, but it never took long to get ripped apart and land on the front row. The banter was hilarious ("God has a son? Let's crucify that motherfucker!"), the costumes were fantastic and the show was always unpredictable--no telling who would get killed next, or what monster would emerge from backstage. Up until the end, Oderus was making fun of Nelson Mandela and his self-congratulating mourners, laughing at Flight 370 conspiracies and picking fights with Kerry King. Even his fans got offended, from metalheads upset about his jokes at As I Lay Dying's expense or Kevin Smith getting provoked into a Twitter fight when Oderus pointed out (correctly) that Smith's reality show was a waste of time.

Actually, Urungus was right about most things, including social issues ("So Utah is going to repeal gay marriage, but you can still have ten sister mama wives. Reminds me of a planet I crushed. Planet of the Morons."), American ignorance ("Dude from Syria gasses 3000 of his own people and what do Americans care about? Miley Cyrus acting like a retard!") and how to make listeners laugh and retch in the same sentence ("O.K. you worthless piles of rancid phlegm...give me not one but two reasons why I shouldn't have sex with this dead bear I found."). Like the best comedians, he brought up the worst things about society and made us feel better about them. But he was the only one who did it all while living as a metal god alien in charge of the greatest band of monsters, robots, humanoids and aliens to ever treat the universe with their presence.

The first time I saw GWAR was the first time I ever crowd-surfed by accident. I went home drenched in the blood of President George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Pope Benedict XVI and Arnold Schwarzenegger, giggling like Beavis and too electrified to care that I was soaking wet in the cold December air. I couldn't believe I got to live in a world with these barbarians. It felt like being Max in an R-rated version of Where the Wild Things Are. Of course I saw them every chance I could over the next few years, and as of 2012 they were better than ever. Their antitheist jokes were funnier than anything in God is Not Great or Religulous. They slaughtered both of the 2012 presidential candidates and forever changed the way I say the name "Rob Zombie." I was ready to go back and see it all again. It's going to be harder to deal with the next Rand Pauls and Vladimir Putins knowing that we're never going to see what their large intestines look like dripping from Oderus Urungus' mouth.

Up until the end, Brockie was finding new ways to be hilarious and repugnant. It's almost inevitable that every shock rock artist loses their bite (yesterday's Ozzy is today's Osbournes Reloaded), and that comedy acts have even shorter shelf lives than boy bands (Green Jellö, anyone? Dread Zeppelin?). But Oderus Urungus and GWAR were never neutered by the mainstream, whether stealing Empire Records with the best-ever metal cameo or telling off Greg Gutfeld on Oderus' Fox News appearances, before the channel reportedly banned Oderus for dismembering Sarah Palin and playing with her entrails. As of last month, they were still disembowling prime ministers and infuriating bureaucracies (in Australia, of all places), horrifying and thrilling audiences 30 years into their incomparable career.

But no matter how gross they got, GWAR always mattered by being funny. If they had just worn costumes and talked shit, they could have been Lordi. If they had taken themselves more seriously, they could have been Mudvayne. But instead they were GWAR, the most uproarious and convincingly extraterrestrial band in the world. Thank you Dave Brockie and Oderus Urungus, for making the galaxy a funnier place.

Tool, "Forty Six & 2"

A friend recently sent me one of those "What Your Favorite Band Says About You" articles, and one passage in particular stuck out to me:

"Tool: You’re either really smart or really dumb."



Tool is a little like metal's Chuck Palahniuk, an artistic, sensitive and homoerotic talent with a dedicated fanbase of bros. Radio metalheads like to sing along and like to shoot their gun, and one can almost see the band mocking their unsuspecting admirers by getting frat boys to wear t-shirts with the word "TOOL" printed across the front. Yet Tool are also favored by nerds and Liberal Arts kids who enjoy their long, mathematical compositions, abstract lyrics and music videos modeled after the Brothers Quay. The result is a band that sells millions of records, wins Grammys and packs large venues despite barely doing any interviews and refusing to put their music on iTunes.

Another way that Tool is akin to Palahniuk is that all their art is pretty much alike. Tool devotees (and boy, are they devoted) can tell me that 10,000 Days is more conceptual than Undertow, and I'm sure that if you listen to both of them 10,000 times that's true. But for those of us who also want to make time for other bands, 1996's Ænema, featuring "Forty Six & 2," will satiate our alternative prog-metal needs just fine.

"Forty Six & 2" is inspired by the Jungian Shadow, referring to the human unconsciousness. Tool also references Jung's idea of gaining two more chromosomes in the next evolutionary stage, hence the title. But more impressively, Tool signified the next evolutionary stage in heavy music, building on Metallica's thrash symphonies, Nine Inch Nails' industrial intimacy, Neurosis' post-metal artistry and the Melvins irreverent unpredictability with their own artistic stamp. Tool may not have evolved since Ænema, but as heard in bands like Gojira, Opeth and Intronaut, they got metal to evolve for them.

To Break the Spell of Aging: What makes a band sound "dated?"

This week, Metallica's Kill 'Em All turns 30. I'm listening as I write this (yes, I can barely control my head enough to type), and it sounds just as great as I remembered. One of the best rock debuts and an all-time classic metal album. I'd even argue that it's one of the greatest punk albums ever. But one thing that always surprises me about Kill 'Em All is how modern it sounds.



Three decades have done nothing to wane Kill 'Em All's ferocity. If anything, it sounds even more brutal, now knowing how many thrash and metalcore bands couldn't emulate it without watering it down. The production is perfectly raw, the kind of sound that black metal bands consistently aim for and always fail at. Were the scowling, acne-faced boys of Metallica to support Kill 'Em All today, they could hop on a tour with anyone from Meshuggah to Kvelertak to the Dillinger Escape Plan to Immortal.

But why is this? Consider Venom's Black Metal, released a few seasons before Kill 'Em All. Its influence is all over Metallica--that hardcore-infected metal and basement production are just as discernible here, only Venom did it before Metallica. The lyrics aren't nearly as good as Metallica's, but no one listens to metal for the lyrics. The music on Black Metal is pretty great. So why does it sound enjoyably silly today, whereas Kill 'Em All sounds essential?



When music ages poorly, it has little to do with how influential it is, as Black Metal proves. It has even less to do with the way it sounded at the time. Giorgio Moroder's entire career feels buried in the '80s, yet Daft Punk just included him on their ultra-hip new album. What really matters is how the artists that emulate the sound compare to the originals. Countless bands have sounded like Metallica since 1983, including several great ones, but none of whom are as transcendent as Kill 'Em All. Shortly after Black Metal kicked off a musical renaissance, it was outclassed by Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth and Testament. I'm impressed that Venom's influence has carried over to bands as varied as High on Fire and Behemoth, but I'm even less likely to play Black Metal when the best work of the latter two bands is available.

This year, Venom's influence turned up on the Melvins' excellent covers album Everybody Loves Sausages, which King Buzzo and the gang opened with their own version of Venom's "Warhead." It never stops being fun to watch a band as idiosyncratic as the Melvins constantly increase in stature. At least once a year, it seems like a great new band breaks through on the sounds that the Melvins defined--Sleep, Mastodon, Boris, Neurosis, Isis, Big Business, Made Out of Babies, Torche, Coliseum and East of the Wall all come to mind. All of these artists are honoring Houdini and Stoner Witch with their music, but none of them have been able to occupy that sound from the Melvins. One still can't get that unpredictable avant-sludge-stoner-doom-punk-grunge-metal anywhere else. Yet with more and more great bands working on those ideas, the Melvins matter more now than ever.

Think about the band that's generally considered the architect of heavy metal, Black Sabbath. Reasonable listeners still credit them with inventing and perfecting the genre. Their chief rival at the time was Deep Purple, a quintet of equally innovative Brits who basically popularized the idea of blues-based hard rock being played faster than Led Zeppelin. Purple easily outsold Sabbath, got more radio play, generally received better reviews and often played bigger venues. But Deep Purple couldn't survive the rise of AC/DC, Van Halen and Aerosmith, none of whom tried to compete with Sabbath's tuned-down doom rock and occult-inspired lyrics, but all of whom thoroughly trounced "Highway Star" several times over.

It's examples like this that remind us why originality in rock music, which infamously stole themes and progressions from the blues, is overrated. It's admirable to break ground, but it doesn't matter much if the ground that you break gets covered by someone who writes better songs than you.