To do before you die: see GWAR live in concert
October 12th, 2008 by Price
So yes, I mentioned in a post a few days ago that I had seen GWAR live. The place was the Fillmore East (the artist formerly known as Irving Plaza) in New York City. The time was somewhere between 4 and 7 beers. The band: GWAR, the most well-known costumed, blood-slinging, celebrity lampooning, innards releasing, huge penis costume wearing offensive band of all time.
I did not know what to expect. All I knew was Saddam a Go-GO. I just knew these guys put on a crazy show. To be honest, I did not know (and still don’t know ) the name of a single GWAR song, much less remember what any of them really sounded like (other than being metal/punkish). That however is not the point.
You have all heard the tales of GWAR’s live shows, so I won’t bore you with the basic stuff. You know the premise. The guys have been on Jerry Springer for Pete’s sake. They are capable of anything.
I knew I was in for a treat when I arrived and noticed how intoxicated the crowd was. We showed up 10 minutes before GWAR was going to be on, so sadly we missed the openers Kingdom of Sorrow. But I digress.
While in the beer line, we noticed a TV which displayed a feed into the video system GWAR would use as a backdrop on stage. There was a countdown for “Time Until Death”. Noticing this, we jumped out of line and ran upstairs to document the counter.
Before the band came on, there were the requisite comedic videos played, explaining the evening and introducing the crowd to GWAR’s manager, Sleazy P. Martini for the evening, a greasy amalgam of Elvis and Tony Montana.
Apparently the night would culminate with a bout for the Mid-Galactic Wrestling championship. Whatever, who cares, bring on the fake blood!
When they came onstage, the crowd went bezerk. They guy to the left of Sleazy P above was some talk show who got the honor of being the first figure to be decapitated. This was so cool. Oderus Urungus used his sword to decapitate the guy, and then used his body/neck to shower the crowd with what seemed like an endless amount of blood. This would be a common theme, “killing” people and then using corpses as vehicles for blood spillage.
By the second song, wasted screaming girls (I said girls) were carried out of the venue slumped over the shoulders of the security staff.
A few songs in, I noticed some of the stage freaks moving towards the left, climbing up onto the speakers. They began to uncover something up there, which appeared to be a cannon. That’s exactly what it was. This picture is a bit fuzzy, but you can get the idea:
For the next 5 minutes or so, these fellows proceeded to cover the entire audience in a mixture of red, green, and black goop. It looked like clowns had exploded all over the place.
The rest of the show was incredible. Highlights included:
- “John McCain” getting his face ripped off and chest torn apart (and bleeding all over the crowd)
- “Barack Obama” getting his skull ripped off (and bleeding all over the crowd)
- “Hillary Clinton” having her breasts torn off and gushing blood from the wounds all over the crowd
- “Marilyn Manson” and a Hippie being murdered on stage
- The beforementioned intergalactic championship wrestling, which involved 2 fights and lots of flying body parts
- A guy running around on stage with a giant syringe, injecting something into Oderus’ penis and other band members.
- Oderus using said penis to ejaculate green shit all over the crowd during the final song of the night
- General ridiculousness
See below for more pics of the show and the above mentioned events. I will say this: if you ever get a chance to see GWAR live, make every possible effort to do so. Oderus has been in the band for over 20 years now, and I am positive he is getting tired of waking up every morning thinking “why the fuck did I do that last night?”, so do it while you can.
[Thanks to PDL for letting me use his camera and cleaning these up for me.]
Tags: barack obama, gwar, hillary clinton, irving plaza, john mccain, marilyn manson, metal, oderus urungus, shitfaced