I had a feeling Antarctica was a bad place to visit; it’s hard to travel through, there aren’t many tourist attractions, and it is now where I have been captured by its only man-thing residents, GWAR. Many know GWAR as a popular metal band famous for gory live shows, but I now know them as monsters who have chained me to a rock and begun removing parts of my body for their amusement.
So that the history books record me as an ever-diligent reporter, I used what may have been my final painful moments to ask GWAR’s lead singer, Oderus Urungus, a few questions. “Dive right into this!” Oderus proclaimed, a reference to me as a sort of living buffet, but I took it as the green light to speak. I broke the ice by recalling a previous encounter in which GWAR’s guitarist, Balsac, stole my friend’s hotdog, ate half, then autographed it.
“That’s kinda the way you act when you have a bear trap for a face. He’s got severe inadequacy issues,” Oderus explained, “The truth of the matter is that his face is located where his scrotum is and his scrotum is located where his face is.”
Oderus then settled into a cozy chair, noshed on one of my vital organs, and spoke at length about his crack addiction.
“It’s not really a problem, it’s just the way I am,” he confessed, “The word crack appears on the new record about 800 times, but there’s worse things I could be into. I could be Republican.”
Oderus had started to open up about his personal life. I was winning his favour. I knew this was a chance to save my life by bringing up their new album. Oderus raised himself with a laboured grunt and then, with great pride, explained to me that Lust in Space, the new album, has rendered them “aerodyte” and “positively voluminous.”
With every inch of my remaining body I believe that Lust in Space is the greatest record ever produced. Indeed, it is the first GWAR record to crack the Billboard top 100 chart in its debut. Oderus feels they are still improving, stating that the band are “eternal and immortal and have forever to work on (their) chops.”
Oderus then raised his mighty sword aloft and moved it in a semi-circular motion, as he regaled me with tales of journeys to the planets “Flab-Quarve-7,” “Metal-metal land,” “The Wide World Of Sports,” and “Scumdogia.” Surprisingly, despite being well-travelled and into gigantic monsters, he claims to have never visited Japan.
“It’s for the stupidest reason, too.” he explained with frustration, “They just keep lying about where it is. That’s what kept us out of Canada for so many years. A lot of people thought we were banned, [but] it was just bad directions.”
GWAR has, of course, now made many trips through Canada, and will be invading Winnipeg again this year once the snows of December have arrived.
“A couple of tours ago we started leaving a string everywhere we went, like Theseus and the Minotaur in the labyrinth of King Minos. We follow the one that says ‘Canada‘ to get back.” he explains.
What terrified me about Oderus now was not that he was coming to my home town, but that he was literate. I was shocked. Oderus then explained that the string was in fact a part of former GWAR member Slymenstra Hymen’s tampon. I was not as shocked to hear Oderus say this.
Oderus now seemed to take a shine to me. His minions began to attach cybernetic replacements for my body parts which he had feasted upon earlier and tells me, “You’re obviously a very smart human, you’ve realised that Lust in Space is the greatest fucking album we’ve ever done. You know that you still have to die horribly, [but] closer to the top of the heap.”
Relieved, I can now prepare for GWAR’s arrival at the Garrick Centre on Dec. 5, an occasion Oderus says he will use for “urinating on everyone.” Oderus then hurled me back home with a final point to ponder — “For the common man, just knowing that somewhere out there, GWAR is doing something extremely horrible, it gives people hope.”
