GWAR is an iconic and utterly unique American heavy metal band that emerged from the depths of the Richmond, Virginia music scene in the mid-1980s. Currently, GWAR is composed of lead vocalist Blöthar the Berserker (Michael Bishop), rhythm guitarist Balsac the Jaws of Death (Mike Derks), lead guitarist Pustulus Maximus (Brent Purgason), bassist Beefcake the Mighty (Casey Orr) and drummer Jizmak Da Gusha (Brad Roberts). While many bands seek to entertain and captivate their audiences with music and performance, GWAR takes this to an entirely different level, blending outrageously theatrical stage shows with satirical, grotesque and over-the-top personas. This band, often described as “shock rock” has left a lasting mark on the world of music and pop culture, earning a dedicated following through their sensational career and ever-evolving, bizarre mythos. GWAR is not just a musical group; they are a multimedia spectacle and art collective that pushes the boundaries of art, humor and shock value, making them one of the most enigmatic and controversial acts in the history of rock and metal.
However, if you ask any of the members from GWAR, they are not from Richmond, but not even from this Earth. Rather, they hail from a group of interplanetary warriors, called The Scumdogs of The Universe, and due to their recurring failures as space warriors, they were sent to the “insignificant shitball” that is Earth, where they have been making bone-crushing metal and head-pounding rock and roll ever since.
With just a few hours before their show in Cincinnati, Ohio, mxdwn had the pleasure of speaking with the World of Mist native, Blöthar the Berserker.
mxdwn: Hi, my name is Riley and I am a music feature writer at mxdwn. I’m here today with Blöthar the Berserker from GWAR. Hi Blöthar.
Blöthar: Well, hi.
mxdwn: So we see you took over as GWAR’s lead vocalist after you instantaneously appeared at their 2014 Riot Fest performance in Chicago after the departure of GWAR founder Odorous Urungus. How has it felt to carry on his legacy these past 9 years?
Blöthar: Well, it’s been interesting, that’s for sure. You know, it’s been a lot of fun. I mean, GWAR’s had a good time. Obviously it’s been a difficult time for the entire world. What with the pandemic and all of that. But you know we’ve soldiered onward and GWAR is doing better than we ever have. We’ve got, certainly, you know a lot of irons in the fire these days, working on films working on new music. We’ve got a lot of products out. There’s no end to the level of that which we’re willing to whore ourselves out for money. So you know, there’s like, I said, a lot going on. We miss Odorous for sure and we do feel like it’s our charge, our mission, to carry the band forward in his absence and hopefully one day see him again.
mxdwn: That’s beautiful and we can definitely see all of the work you guys keep putting in, doing show after show. Incredible show after show. But Blöthar, where did your journey with rock and roll start? We know you’ve spoken before about going against your mother and your stepfather’s wishes for you to be a priest, your first interactions with GWAR and the Marine Corps Band in Scumdoggia, but you’ve never shed light to what led to you playing music in the first place.
Blöthar: Well, you know, I mean, I was kind of an overweight calf, so to speak. I didn’t really get to talk to the she-bulls very much until you know, I figured it out. One day I went to see a band perform at a little small town festival. I saw this great, big, huge, fat dude and he was playing bass guitar. Then, when he got done playing bass guitar, he was talking to the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, who was like some tall, foxy lady. And I was like, “Wow! That’s a hot chick man, hey!” So I was like, “Is that all you have to do is to know how to play the bass guitar and then you can have girls talk to you?” So you know I mean, it’s like every other musician on the face of the earth, who has a wiener. Then I assume that it’s kind of true the other way around, I started playing music for chicks.
mxdwn: So you can say hot chick started everything, huh?
Blöthar: That’s right. They did. They started it all. Of course, in my case, hot chicks on my planet is a relative term.
mxdwn: You’re currently right in the middle of your Age of Imbeciles tour, a full North American tour with support from Negative Approach, Cancer Christ and X-Cops. How has your experience been so far and what makes this special compared to previous tours?
Blöthar: Well, I’m here to tell you right now that X-Cops are bananas. I don’t know what’s going on with that band, but if that’s what the police force in this country is like then we are in big trouble. You know, as far as Negative Approach, that’s an old school hard core band and you know, GWAR actually has very similar roots to Negative Approach. Because, GWAR, let’s not forget – that we started out as a band on the American hard core punk rock scene in the mid to late eighties. So it’s been great to hook up with these guys who we’ve known for a while, who we’ve always liked and they still bring it. Man, they’re still just as powerful. They’re teaching the kids, man, that this is how it’s done. Cancer Christ, you know, this is a newer band and they’re just bananas. I mean, that is a weird, weird band. The very first night that we played, the singer…the singer just repeatedly keeps making horrendous mistakes every night. We’re just laughing at our tour manager because it’s some new nightmare. The first night they played he lit the entire street in front of the venue on fire, he was dressed like a priest and he was out there, apparently just trying to incite a riot. I don’t know what he was trying to do. Then, so we were like we had to talk with them, “You know, look no more trying to set the place on fire like, let’s at least agree to that.” Then the next night he just picks up an emergency phone that’s downstairs, that is all taped off and says, “Don’t pick it up,” and he just picks it up and says, “AuuUuuGggHhh!” so they almost have to empty the building because of a fire alarm going out. The guy’s nuts. He’s clearly crazy and we like that.
mxdwn: {Laughs} It sounds like they’re even giving you all a run for your money!
Blöthar: They’re a great bunch of guys and they’re very funny. So we love it.
mxdwn: Speaking of X-Cops, what’s your involvement with the opener? Can you confirm or deny any part participation with the group?
Blöthar: I don’t have any participation with the group. Except for that, you know, I try to stay away from. I’m not worried that they’re gonna arrest me, I’m worried they’re gonna take my drugs and smoke em.
mxdwn: {Laughs} Yeah, you gotta keep those protected! So speaking of tour, there’s a Loudwire interview , where you state that you only murder compelling figures on stage. Is there criteria that you have for deciding what puny human is worthy of death at your hands? Who have you destroyed on tour so far and is there anyone you’re looking forward to destroying that you haven’t yet?
Blöthar: Basically with GWAR, there are a couple of different types of murder victims, right? We have The Archetypes, the sort of symbols of power in our world that we go after. Then we have, the actual sort of celebrity types that are, for one reason or another, completely repulsive. You know and that’s pretty easy. We choose sanctimonious people, we choose figures of power, we choose disappointing politicians, which isn’t hard. I mean, just pick one, you know. They’re all a disappointment. They all fucking suck. And celebrities, there’s always something wrong with those people, so it’s pretty easy to pick on them. Honestly, I mean you won’t see us killing like you know the good ones right? Like I mean Dolly Parton. She’s certainly compelling right? I love Dolly Parton. We’re not gonna parade Dolly Parton out here and kill her. She’s on our side, you know what I mean. But we might kill uh, what’s this, Jason Aldean? He’s available. Why? Because he’s a Turd pretty easy.
mxdwn: Let Jason Aldean hear this so he’s never caught at a GWAR show {laughs}! But you know, speaking of tour, you know you recently surprised your fans on your Friday the Thirteenth show by bringing out Clitarus Maximus, for the fan favorite, “The Cutter”. What was it like to perform the song live in its full glory for the very first time?
Blöthar: Clitaurus Maximus. That’s her name and I’m not mispronouncing it. There is a “taurus,” you know, it’s like a bull thing. Clitaurus Maximus she’s got a lot going on and I’m not just talking about in the pants. She’s got a lot going on. That is a very talented human being, but she’s not a human being. She used to be a human being. Then she turned into Clitaurus Maximus, but her human form was, of course, Lzzy Hale the singer for the band Halestorm and guitar player. She’s just so talented, you know, I mean, it’s like having Lady Gaga up there, or something. She’s just fantastic and we share a manager. We have the same manager and it turns out that Lzzy’s was a GWAR fan, so what could we do? We had to make her character, Clitaurus Maximus, come out on stage and join the Maximus clan because she is a guitar player. Our fans, who at times will reach the level of like, Star Trek enthusiasm right? Just complete goobers. They’re like, “She can’t be a Maximus, because she’s not a guitar player,” and I’m like, “Yes, she is, you freaking Dimwit.” So anyway, you know, like they try to tell us what the rules are for our band.
mxdwn: I believe she just got named one of Rolling Stones top guitarists of all time, she definitely deserves to be a part of the Maximus clan.
Blöthar: I know! {Laughs} Freakin’ dum-dums.
mxdwn: Speaking of best guitarists of all time, GWAR has been making music for decades. What keeps everyone motivated and inspired to continue to create the music that you do, especially as elaborate and extravagant as it is?
Blöthar: Fear, absolutely just fear. If we stop we’ll die and you know I mean generally, I think that it’s fun. We have a good time doing it and we’ll stop when it’s not fun. There isn’t anything like the band and there isn’t any place we can go see people do the things that we want to see so we just have to do them ourselves. That’s kind of how that works. Well, that’s loud, isn’t it?
mxdwn: Yeah, that makes sense. I think what people really seem to enjoy about your music is your ability to strike that perfect balance between humor, fun and seriousness. Your latest album, The New Dark Ages, explores some pretty dark, heavy themes of technology’s social degradation and its contribution to the loss of truth. How do you balance these two things that seem to contrast so much?
Blöthar: I mean, the world is a funny place, right? It’s not hard to find humor in things. I think that the problem is, that people who play this type of music, who play heavy metal and oftentimes you play rock and roll in general, they take themselves too seriously. They believe that, they have to build an image of authenticity. Everybody strives for authenticity and they do it by being as artificial as they possibly fucking can. And you know, GWAR, we don’t care about being authentic. We are absolute artifice. That is one of the most freeing things in the world. We don’t have to worry about being fucking pretentious, right? We don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. We just do what we do. We just create what we want to see. I think what we try to do is… GWAR has always been a sort of fun house mirror of the world. We managed to launch a pretty serious critique of modernity, even though, you know, it’s disguised in absolute absurdity, right? But I mean, what else is the world? I mean, it’s a world that is so horrible if you really look at it. If you don’t find, if you’re not born with a way to filter out the misery and pain of this world, then you’ll absolutely go insane. I think that that’s what insane people are, people who lack that filter in some way. So it’s our job to talk about this, this whole world that people choose all the time not to see right? Because if they did, they’d lose their fucking minds.
mxdwn: It is reflected that what you do in GWAR is true art. That is how you’ve gotten such a big audience and why you’ve had so much success over the years. I feel like your music allows a place for people to come, and, you know, dig into the humor, dig into the fun because I agree with you, that if we get too caught up in the seriousness of this world there wouldn’t be any fun, there wouldn’t be any humor and there wouldn’t be any joy.
Blöthar: That’s right. We constantly get asked, “Well how has GWAR not been canceled?” The answer to that is: why would you want to cancel this?! For one thing, that assumes that there are platoons of people out there who have no legitimate complaint, right? I do believe that’s certainly true, at some level for some people. But by and large, GWAR appeals to the disaffected. GWAR, we have a tremendous audience of trans people. Obviously being a metal band, our appeal across racial lines, just because the music itself has traditionally been raced, is not what it, what it could be or what it should be. But certainly, GWAR to be inclusive by being abusive to everybody {laughs}. People, I mean, they’re addressed. People are addressed, we’re talking to people and I think that they appreciate that. That’s why, when we look out in the crowd, there’s an incredibly diverse group of people, and that’s why GWAR is spared some of that, you know, I think that people understand that GWAR is making a statement. We’re not talking about how great it is to, I don’t know, just get money, abuse women, be sexist, transphobic and all that shit. I mean GWAR is for the outcasts of this world and it’s made by the outcasts of this world. We’re not rock stars. We don’t hang around backstage with fucking Slayer, right, like we’re not cool dudes. We’re fucking comic book geeks and we don’t give a shit about Slayer or any other band. We’re much more interested in the people that like those bands. The goobers that those guys don’t wanna hang out with. We’ll hang out with them right? That’s what GWAR is.
mxdwn: GWAR is for the goobers {laughs}! I would say GWAR has definitely transcended certain barriers. You were speaking earlier about racial lines but I think GWAR has transcended timelines. I think there is an uptake in younger GWAR fans and people who are resonating with your messages, seeing GWAR as this stance, as a statement. Looking at it as a piece of critical artwork and critical thought, whereas many people are so used to just “canceling” something because they’re not really looking at what the message behind the act is or seeing it in an artistic context.
Blöthar: Right.
mxdwn: Speaking of art in your various projects, you know, all the members of GWAR have been involved in various side projects and collaborations across your time here on Earth. How would you say that these experiences, even those with Slave Pit Inc. and Slave Pit Records, have influenced your band’s exploration of sound, or even genre?
Blöthar: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. So GWAR is a band of eras and the initial era was a group of people who were art students in Richmond, Virginia. This was in 1985 and at the time in Art School there was sort of a division between, for instance, illustrators and fine artists. So the sculptors and painters and actors who made GWAR, and musicians, you’ll notice that the musicians were almost an afterthought {laughs}, like these were people that were already just really into art and very aware of these sort of artificial conflicts and classifications of art. GWAR started out in a very avant-garde sense, as sort of taking pot shots at what was considered art {laughs}. Some of the guys who started it, they were a little bit older than you know, even in 1985, these were guys who had really been there in the late seventies when Punk Rock got started. These older guys, they had different tastes in music. We brought in a bunch of younger musicians and at The Slave Pit, when people were working on stuff and making stuff, those guys would listen to the music that they listen to. Aerosmith, Jesus Christ Superstar, Devo and Parliament, all of these bands that people don’t associate with GWAR at all, but that go into the gumbo that makes this band. I mean, even bands like The Tubes, right? People don’t think about bands like that anymore. But Trio, for instance, right? These are bands that had an idea and pursued that idea, especially somebody like Devo. So it wasn’t like a big sort of dumb Emerson, Lake & Palmer art project, it was more like underground comics, it was something fun and funny. But definitely, I mean the sounds that they listen to influenced the sounds that we were making, the bands we would play with, like the Butthole Surfers. GWAR has, traditionally at least, the first few records we tried to kind of incorporate weird sort of tribal and industrial sounds, you know, making the sounds that we think that barbarians from outer space would make {laughs}.
mxdwn: In a lot of GWAR’s earlier work we do see that exploration of genre. There’s everything from a little country and jazz to punk and metal of course.
Blöthar: Yeah {laughs}! And GWAR is free to do that. We don’t have to, you know and I love bands that do it, don’t make any mistake I mean, I was sort of talking about Slayer, but that was more like, just some of the the people in the band, but sound wise, like sonically, that band has a sound that they’ve managed to develop over time. AC/DC would be a great example of a band that has a sound that doesn’t really change, but that – you know, it does get better. It’s great and it’s classic. GWAR’s never been interested in doing that. We want to be able to play a lot of different types of music. And we can, that’s what’s so fun about it.
mxdwn: I think that that’s one thing that really sets GWAR apart from other metal bands is just your continuation to grow, evolve and push yourself as a band. I’m sure the changing of members must help with that. But just the exploration and I think you mentioned earlier freedom, is what people think about when they think of GWAR. It is a very free band, you know, conceptually, visually, musically, it’s very free.
Blöthar: And when people watch, it’s interesting, like when people see GWAR even out of context. One of their first reactions is this sense of liberation, I’ve noticed that. They’re like, “Oh, wow! These guys break all the rules. That means there aren’t any rules right? So I’ll take my artificial leg and throw it up on stage,” {laughs}. Or we’ve played shows, especially in the early days, where it basically looked like a saloon brawl in the Wild Wild West. We come out there, people are just taking their shirts off and pouring booze down one another’s throats. Just an insane party {laughs}.
mxdwn: Yeah, that’s pretty crazy {laughs}. Do you remember any particularly crazy moments across your whole career? Like, what is the craziest moment you have ever had at a show?
Blöthar: We always talk about this one show that we did at a place called Taco Land, which was in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio has a long history with Punk Rock. I mean, it was one of the stops on the Sex Pistols tour in the United States. So Taco Land was a pretty legendary venue. The interesting thing about it is that it was run by this Mexican American guy and most of the clientele that would come during the day were migrant farm workers and then at night it was a punk club. So what happened was that Ram, who was the guy that ran it, when we brought all this stuff in he was like, “Man, this is crazy stuff these guys are bringing in.” So he called all of his friends, who were all migrant farm workers, right? They all came and there were literally, like, a couple hundred workers there, with ladies like, you know, beautiful ladies all done up, everybody drinking and having a good time. Drinking tequila and watching GWAR, they had never seen anything like it. I mean, obviously, it was our one of our first tours across the country. What I remember is that there were so many of them there that the punk rockers, like when they started opening the doors, they couldn’t get in. So they were outside, looking in, watching the show from the courtyard and Ram just let them in for free. But inside, it was exactly what I described to you. Freaking people shooting guns in the air and you know, just losing their minds. I’ll never forget that gig. That was crazy {laughs}.
mxdwn: I feel like that’s a pretty good representation of what GWAR is, opening minds while also getting a little crazy at the same time. You can’t have one without the other at a GWAR show.
Blöthar: {Laughs} It was fun, it was. I’ll never forget that night. That’s for sure.
mxdwn: Can you give us any hints to the future of GWAR? I know you said in the beginning you guys were working on some new music, some other products. Can fans expect some more masterful re-releases like Battle Maximus or the special Scumdogs XXX Live? What can we expect?
Blöthar: Well we have Pit Records, which is our label. So we’re going to be putting more stuff out on that, all the stuff that we own, as we acquire stuff. We had this deal with Shudder, where we showed our documentary and we’ll probably do some more stuff with Shudder. We’re definitely thinking about putting more of our catalog of video and film material out. The big focus right now is kind of working on this film that we’re working towards, so that’s gonna be fun.
mxdwn: That’s a lot! I’m sure fans will be all looking forward to that, especially the old footage, that will be a real treat.
Blöthar: Yeah {laughs}.
mxdwn: Well Blöthar, I just have one more for you. If you ever indulge in lowly Earthling food, what is your GWARbar order?
Blöthar: Oh! My GWARbar order {laughs}? GWARbar turns out to be a pretty good Vegetarian and Vegan restaurant, believe it or not. They have a lot of different types of food, but Balsac the Jaws O’Death is quite an accomplished chef who comes from a family of chefs. I really enjoy the Jizmak ‘N Cheese, that’s pretty good. I love the nachos there man, just straight up nachos. They’re awesome pulled pork nachos. Yeah, smoked meat.
Tickets to GWAR’s Age of Imbeciles tour can be found here. You can watch their documentary, “This is GWAR,” on Shudder.