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.

Ten Metal Bands to See Before You Die: GWAR

Imagining rock music without GWAR is like imagining film without Troma, or TV without South Park. GWAR gave shock rock its sense of humor back and reinvented it as something edgier, funnier and sicker. In a genre that does comedy better than any other kind of music (Spinal Tap, Steel Panther, Dethklok, Austrian Death Machine, S.O.D., Cheech and Chong's "Earache My Eye,") GWAR does it best.

 
Nothing is taboo at a GWAR show. They dismembered George W. Bush for eight years, then started mutilating Barack Obama before he'd even taken the oath of office. Every show has more jokes about sex abuse, terrorist attacks and bodily fluids than any Aristocrats routine. Imagine Bill Maher's antitheism without his self-importance, or Bill Hicks' misanthropy with a headbanging soundtrack. Their show is regularly updated to reflect the week's events, with no attempt to pander to anyone, even metalheads (Sample banter: "Glad to hear Randy Blythe has escaped the clutches of the infamous Czech justice system. Now he can get back where he belongs, blowing me.") If it's sacred, GWAR will destroy it.

In all my years of taking friends to metal shows, only once has a band has ever inspired one of my buddies to leave early in disgust. It was in 2009, when GWAR were ripping the newly-deceased Michael Jackson's face off and gruesomely eating a few babies. My friend, a sensible and cultured guy who is neither religious nor conservative, could not take it. It'd be one thing to offend a Michele Bachmann type, who probably thinks that Coldplay is Satanic death metal, but watching GWAR offend a guy who went to Sarah Lawrence College with me was something else altogether. As long as there's a room for GWAR to obliterate, rock n' roll will never become safe or stale.

But don't dismiss GWAR as being gross for the sake of being gross. GWAR are first rate showmen, social critics and comedians, not to be lumped in with the Slipknots and Lordis that cop and dilute GWAR's style. Unlike their humorless shock rock followers, GWAR never let commercial aspirations get in the way of a great time. In an interview last year, bandleader Oderus Urungus quoted Rob Zombie as (reportedly) saying, "The first time I saw GWAR, I thought ‘I want to be that, but I want to make money.’" "That to me says a lot about Rob Zombie as an artist," stated Urungus. "It says that he isn’t one."

He didn't have to go any further and call himself an artist, because, as anyone who's seen GWAR will attest, that fact is never in question. Shock rockers and shock humorists come and go almost as quickly as boy bands, but nearly 30 years into their career, GWAR are funnier and wilder than ever, leaving countless Mudvaynes and Mushroomheads in their bloody dust. GWAR beat on, boats against the current, boors ceaselessly into the future.

GWAR at Music Hall of Williamsburg

They killed Jesus. They killed babies. They brought Jesus back as Monster Robot Undead Jesus and killed him again. They killed Mitt Romney at the opening and slaughtered Barack Obama for the encore. All in your average Michael McDonald show.



No, of course, this was GWAR. Without having a single song that you remember, GWAR are approaching AC/DC's record for consistently delivering a great metal show. The basics are the same--escaped aliens from Antarctica dismembering celebrities between a no holds barred horror-comedy routine and a soundtrack that includes songs like "A Womb with a View." The dismemberments could have made Peter Jackson sick, and included every imaginable (and some previously unimaginable) orifice and bodily fluid. The fans, some in metal band t-shirts and others in plain whites intended to show off the carnage that landed on us, sopped it all up.

Few bands ever have done a better job of carving out a niche and perfecting it. Reinventing Alice Cooper's Halloween theatrics with death metal extremity seems like a given now that we have Lordi, but GWAR reminded us that they did it best. If KISS is too commercial and Buruzm is too self-serious, girl do I have the band for you.

Sans costumes, weapons and codpieces, frontman Oderus Urungus would still be a worthy comedian. His stabs at the Lord were as savage as Christopher Hitchens', and the swipe he took at rivals "Zob Romney and Manson Marilyn" (feuding on their co-headlining tour this week) sounded just like the one my high school English teacher made in the '90s. Still, the banter, like GWAR's music, mainly served to support the band's next round of killings. I think Adolf Hitler, who was shown about as much respect as Jesus Christ, was next.

For their encore, GWAR dedicated a metalized take on Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son" to recently departed guitarist Flattus Maximus. Some sources will tell you that Flattus' real name was Cory Smoot and that he did of a heart attack, but Oderus informed us that his comrade had safely returned to outer space and been replaced by his brother Pustulus Maximus. It was somehow an appropriately mournful and joival tribute to Flattus, a testament to GWAR's professionalism that climaxed at the arrival of Techno Destructo to saw a few monsters' limbs off.