Chickens! Concert Series #26: Kingdon of Sorrow and GWAR

Yes, I finally broke down and went to see GWAR out of curiosity. Their current tour is known as "electile dysfunction" 2008 (which explains the majority of the stage show), and had openers Toxic Holocaust (their music was blah but their hair was pretty big) and Kingdom of Sorrow.

Kingdom of Sorrow includes the lead singer from Hatebreed (Jamie Jasta) and Kirk Windstein from Crowbar. The band was formed in 2005 and completed their first album, Kingdom of Sorrow which was released this year. Jasta is always high energy (you may remember him from this post), and I think K of S was definitely the highlight of the show.

Now, I am glad I went because I think you should try anything once and I was curious to see what GWAR was all about. The music was kind of incidental, I wasn't really paying attention to it and most of the songs sound pretty much the same anyway (at least they do when you aren't familiar with them). The stage show was interesting, kind of like a bloody, sadistic version of Power Rangers (think about!).

Apparently, the band says that "Gwar" doesn't actually stand for anything and is actually an abbreviated version of "GWAARGGGH!!!", which was their former name. So there ya go. The GWAR mythos is basically that they are immortal space warriors that were exiled to earth by a ceator called the Master. The gave rise to the human race, mayhem ensued, when the Master found out they ended up being frozen in Antarctica. They were subsequently awoken by a combination of pollution related ozone holes and their manager Sleazy P. Martini's shiny suit (he had been on the run from drug dealing charges at the time).

Everyone in the band performs under costumed aliases, which makes it a lot easier for them to switch characters/members without anyone really noticing, in fact the lead singer "Oderus Urungus" aka Dave Brockie has been the only constant since the band started in 1985. The current drummer character "Jizmak Da Gusha" who started in 1989 is the only other main GWAR musician character to be played by only one person (Brad Roberts). The previous drummer character was called Nippleus Erectus (he had been played by two different drummers), but he bathed in a pool of hydrochloric acid and dissolved. The other main characters include "Balsac the Jaws of Death" (guitar, currently played by Mike Derks), "Flattus Maximus" (guitar, currently played by Cory Smoot), and "Beefcake the Mighty" (bass, currently played by Casey Orr). Extra points if you can figure out who is who in the picture. Other than Oderus the other band members don't participate in the on stage action very much. The non-musical stage show was mostly played out by the auxiliary characters: Bone Snapper, Bozo Destructo (also Sleazy P. Martini aka Don Drakulich) and Sawborg Destructo (also Mattron/MX2 the Slave aka Matt Maguire), and a second slave that I don't know about.

The show started with a count down to death on a projector screen and then a video of Sleazy P. Martini's (top of the poster to the left) bid for president. During the show the death toll was 10 (plus a disembodied head that they beat McCain with and a dead dog thing that they sprayed the crowd with). They started by killing an annoying talk show personality (Steve Wilkos) and after that Oderus ate a baby and they shot the crowd with a big blood gun. Then the premise of the stage show began, which was an Intergalactic Wrestling Federation match. The first bout was "Bone Crusher" (green guy on the poster) vs. John McCain, the second was Oderus and Bone Crusher vs. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. Then Oderus and Bone Crusher had to fight some other monsters (Bozo and Sawborg, the middle 2 on the poster) who had stolen the wrestling belts they had won in the first two fights. Then Martini came out and sang Slaughterama where they killed a hippy, an artsy guy, and a Nazi skinhead.

And that's what happened. They played music throughout and between the sections of the stage show, they didn't move around very much (in their defence they are wearing a lot of costume) and, like I say, the music is incidental. Also, as D pointed out, the political schtick that they did would have been a lot more appropriate a few weeks/months ago, a pop culture reference or something would have been better. I don't know, I'm left with the feeling that it should have been more disturbing than it was. There did seem to be a lot of people who were pretty happy to have water and red food colouring sprayed on them. Probably because the violence and characters are so cartoonish and silly, and since it's so obvious that no one is actually being hurt, it's like Punch and Judy or comedic satirical theatre (like Italian commedia dell'arte), but really, really loud. It's funny because it's cheesy satire, but not everyone likes stuff like Grindhouse either.