Rejoice, San Antonio! For Gwar — the Scumdogs of the Universe themselves — came here Saturday to deliver us all from the political shitshow we voted into office just 12 short days ago.
The night at Vibes Event Center started innocently enough. Well, relatively innocently, anyway. Opening band Squid Pisser put on a solid set mixing punk, metal and even a little industrial in a blender. Also stirred into the mix were latex masks, fervent drums, piles of distortion and absolutely fried screaming. At one point, the singer — adorned in a feather jacket — ventured out into the crowd, circling it and screaming menacingly as a row of hands rose up from the audience to hold aloft his microphone cable.
Squid Pisser closed its set with sampled music drenched in haunting reverb, its speed manipulated. The music was interspersed with pure electronic noise, and as it played, it changed and looped in progressively smaller, faster increments until it collapsed into the sound of a machine malfunctioning in Hell.
An auspicious start, indeed.
Dark Funeral, a group representing the second wave of black metal, then took the stage to create a dark, atmospheric soundtrack of swirling strings and screeching guitars, all held together by a steady and driving beat. Singer Heljarmadr — aka Erik Andreas Vingbäck — introduced himself and his corpse paint-wearing, black-robed coven. He announced the band was “from fucking Sweden, and we have come here for one purpose tonight. We’ve come to collect your souls!” That was all the audience needed to hear to inspire screams of abandon. The outfit tore through a great set of hollow screams, rapid-fire blast beats, soaring solos and furious tremolo picking.
“Believe it or not, we’ve been doing this for 30 fucking years,” Heljarmadr said, introducing “Unchain My Soul.” “This song is dedicated to one we lost along the way.”
After the rest of the band emptied the stage, drummer Jalomaah — aka Janne Jesper Jaloma — began another driving beat, slowly being rejoined, one at a time, by his fellow bandmates. Before they were through, Heljarmadr led the audience in three rousing calls of “Hail Satan!” For the last song he unfurled a flag with the group’s familiar Baphomet pentagram logo, waving it aloft as the music swelled in a cascade of blast beats, screaming lead guitar and chiming arpeggios.
But that was all prelude. The night and the audience belonged to the disgraced, banished invaders from Scumdoggia: Gwar.
When Rick Astley’s (Rick Ghastly’s?) “Never Gonna Give You Up” blasted through the speakers, all the earthlings in attendance dutifully stormed up to the stage. It was as though they all knew they deserved to be tortured. More dreadful pop music followed, each song playing just long enough to get the audience singing along. Each time, the rug would be ripped away as the tune suddenly changed just before the chorus. “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies, “Scatman” by Scatman John, “Down Under” by Men at Work, “All Star” by Smashmouth — all these and more assailed the audience’s senses, desensitizing them to what would come.
And thats when the show started.
First, someone costumed as Donald Trump came onstage. Well, he walked onstage, anyway. The Trump stand-in did mention cumming after a brief acceptance speech in which he declared himself God-Emperor of America. He also vowed to inseminate all American women to raise an army of grotesque, orange titty babies. He was soon joined by a scolding Kamala Harris, whom he wasted no time insulting. But a “dark horse third candidate” was announced as waiting in the wings. Preceded by his bandmates, Gwar frontman Blöthar the Berserker came onstage to disembowel President-elect Trump while Vice President Harris twerked, bare-assed, for the crowd to the tune of “El Presidente.”
“Thank you, Houston!” Cried Blöthar, as he and the band tore through a ripping set spanning the shock-rock band’s 40-year career. It’s worth mentioning that in all of the pomp, circumstance, effluence and even controversy surrounding Gwar, that one thing that rarely gets mentioned is the band’s musicianship. As befitting an act thats been going strong for more than a generation, these guys are tight and they hit it hard. The band was in fine form as it shredded its way through the show, breathing life and energy into performances of “Let Them Slay,” “Immortal Corruptor,” “Maggots,” “Saddam A Go-Go,” “Biledriver,” “Sick Of You,” and 11 other heavy-hitters.
Between each song a story unfolded, delivered in back-and-forth dialogue between Blöthar and guitarist BälSäc the Jaws O’Death. Having killed Trump, Blöthar was informed by BälSäc that he would now have to step in and lead America. This being untenable for obvious reasons, BälSäc proposed a solution. He claimed to have a phallic pillar that was, in fact, a time machine. With the lift of a lever and the emanation of smoke, he could summon a capable president from the past to unburden the band of the American people. The first president summoned, Barack Obama, stepped onstage to a smooth R&B theme, only to be stabbed in the chest, and later beheaded by Blöthar.
This humorous pattern repeated itself throughout the show. Former Presidents George Bush (“There were two things that made me such a great President, the North Tower and the South Tower”), Abraham Lincoln (pitted in mortal combat with General Robert E. Lee, no less), Ronald Reagan (holding a nuke and heralding “Bring Back The Bomb”) were all brought forth to have their faces ripped away, torsos flayed and their hands and heads chopped off. Each time, copious amounts of fake blood spewed across the audience in great arcs.
Then BälSäc determined Europe must have the best historical leaders and inadvertently summoned Adolph Hitler. After Hitler was flayed and beheaded, his penis was ripped off, because, of course, it was just hanging out of his pants. At that point Gwar even summoned an amalgamation of all the Founding Fathers to do battle with a grotesque monster.
Naturally, all the summonings providing ample opportunity for to sate Blöthar’s — and the audience’s — blood thirst. All the death and murder culminated in the gory vanquishing of the monster by bodyguard Bonesnapper, who then skewered the Founding Fathers with an American flag. To understate things, it was quite the spectacle. The visceral craziness offered a fitting tribute to the memory of founding Gwar member Dave Brockie, who died in 2014.
Blöthar introduced the final song, “Fuck This Place” by announcing, “I love this fucking town. You know why? Because heavy metal is everywhere!” The finale was prefaced by audience chant of the chorus, and Blöthar’s final words after it concluded were, “Tacoland rules!”The walk-out music? “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal.
Long may Gwar rule!
