Richmond, VA · shock metal

GWAR

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Intergalactic latex monsters spraying fake blood on the front rows since 1984 — thrash chops under the costumes. Wear a poncho.

GWAR grew out of two overlapping Richmond, Virginia projects. Dave Brockie fronted a punk band called Death Piggy that used crude stage props, while art students Hunter Jackson and Chuck Varga had built a workshop, the Slave Pit, to make costumes for a planned film called Scumdogs of the Universe. The two groups merged, and Death Piggy was eventually phased out in favor of the new act.

The stage show built around an interplanetary-barbarian mythology, with foam latex costumes, oversized props, mock executions of political and celebrity figures, and fluids sprayed over the crowd. Musically the band plays thrash and hardcore-inflected heavy metal, disciplined playing sitting underneath the theatrics rather than being swallowed by them.

GWAR reached a mainstream audience in the early 1990s, getting MTV airplay and making in-character appearances on daytime talk shows to argue, in costume, about censorship and media violence. The long-form video Phallus in Wonderland earned a Grammy nomination for Best Long Form Music Video. The band has released fifteen studio albums and sold more than 820,000 records in the United States.

Founding vocalist Dave Brockie, who performed as Oderus Urungus, died in 2014; the band has continued with other members taking on lead roles. Costumes and props are still built in-house by Slave Pit Inc., the collective of artists and musicians who operate GWAR, and the act has extended its name into books, comics, board games, beer, whisky and barbecue sauce.

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