GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #947: GWAR

 

I've been listening to GWAR since high school. I've been with them even through Carnival of Chaos, but I dropped off after Battle Maximus. For reasons. Not too long ago I decided to put together a GWAR playlist. Fuck it. Let's throw the new shit on there, see if it's any good. I was not hopeful, but what the hell?

I try not to bail on a band when they get a new singer. I stuck with Alice in Chains, and they're still putting out good songs, more or less. Not the same as with Layne Staley, but Jerry Cantrell is still there rocking out. But sometimes it's a dealbreaker. If your singer, Bon Scott, died on you, and you thought to hire Brian Johnson, that was a good call. That worked. Now Brian Johnson left and you got an aged Axl Rose to replace him, that's a different story. Were Stone Temple Pilots better with Scott Weiland or without? A more appropriate question: who do you remember more fondly, Stone Temple Pilots or Talk Show? Come to think of it, they had two singers die on them, the other being Chester Bennington for that brief period where he was touring with them. Is Dave Coutts still alive?

So. How does the new GWAR measure up?

It doesn't. Not by a longshot.

It still sounds like GWAR except when the singer is singing. He has one thing he does really well, so he never strays from it. There is no nuance to him. No playfulness. Jokes tend to fall flat. There is no creativity in their profanity and descriptions of bloody violence and sex. The band I remember was a real person, but now they're a pod person. They seem the same, but something is off.

And it's very obvious what is off.

Dave Brockie used to say that he imagined GWAR as a band that could go on forever like KISS. It doesn't matter who is under the masks/paint. He seems to have been right about every member of GWAR . . . except for himself.

By the way, if you didn't know he wrote a book, you should check out Whargoul. It's the most aggressively passive book I've ever read. It's great.

Also, GWAR has been on Fox News a lot. What's up with that? Not sure I want to actually watch the videos to find out. Can anyone summarize?

One last thing. I didn't often listen to This Toilet Earth. It wasn't as good as the others. But I'd completely forgotten about this gem.