When they ran out, we used three little fire extinguishers, each one with different colors, a little one of red, one little one of green, and one little one of yellow. In my first show with the band, we had to go to a convenience store and find an air compressor and compress the tanks. Then it moved to fire extinguishers that we liberated. He had a hot water bottle under his arm and squeezed it. Then Don Drakulich did a gag where he got his arm ripped off.
Hunter made a dick with one of those squeezable ketchup bottles, and filled it full of creamer. So, they wanted to pretend to jerk off to the Playboy because that was a big thing, opening up for the Plasmatics. I’m not sure if the story is in the documentary or not, but Wendy O. The two guys that founded the band, Hunter and Dave, collaborated on Death Piggy, the band that preceded GWAR. Not many people realize that what you were doing was fairly unprecedented. The below interview has been edited for length.ĭen of Geek : What is your favorite part of GWAR, the band, the traveling circus, the living B-movie, experimenting with liquid propellants?īob Gorman: Just being able to come up with a wacky idea and see it through, to play that character and get a little of all of it. From prop fabrication through live character roles, to contributing writer, lyricist, and visual artist, Gorman is one of the forces keeping GWAR alive and pumping viscous fluids.ĭen of Geek caught up with Gorman to hear his thoughts on the documentary, and where the multimedia troupe is going next. After two years helping the band, et al, on an ever-increasing as-needed basis, he dropped out of art school to join GWAR in 1988, because assistance was necessary all the time. Their new lead singer, Blothar the Berserker, is in strong voice, with BalSac – The Jaws Of Death, Jizmak Da Gusha, Pustulus Maximus, and Beefcake The Mighty providing the power throbbing behind and shredding on the solos.Īrtist Bob Gorman, a longtime GWAR collaborator, is the resident Slave Pit historian who wrote the book Let There Be GWAR in 2015. GWAR recently released The New Dark Ages album, which harkens back to the band’s early 1990s sound. GWAR know what their long-time followers want because the creative team are their own biggest fans. GWAR is an art collective, first and foremost, and Brockie’s mission was to fill some space in a culture desperately in need of pretentious deflation. The man who wore the “Cuttlefish of Cthulu” codpiece in the Oderus Urungus costume, Dave Brockie, died of an accidental heroin overdose at his home in Richmond, Virginia, in March 2014. This is GWAR includes current and archival interviews with the musicians and the creative team, as well as artists who appreciate the work, like Weird Al Yankovic, who gave his own face to the band when their frontman tried to pass himself off as a children’s party clown in a very animated project. It is also a special effects lab, a live musical theater troupe, and an independent filmmaking studio, all under a creative conglomeration called The Slave Pit Inc. GWAR have been teetering on the edge of commercial success for over 30 years. GWAR is best known as an iconic heavy metal monster band with gory stage shows, blistering lyrical assaults, and costumes which land bandmembers in court on indecency charges. Shudder’s new documentary This Is GWAR, directed by Scott Barber, charts the history and progress of one of the most insidious threats the planet Earth has ever encountered: An art collective who answer only to themselves and, possibly, their legion of fans.