GWAR front man Oderus Urungus had some fun with the LMA interview while trying to stay focused and discuss all things Soundwave and touring… have a read, have a giggle, picture the poor interviewer's face while you do it!
Hello, oh finally I’m being interviewed by an Australian woman. I have only been talking to stupid men! Are you a sexy woman? Have you ever considered having sex with an alien?
*Laughs* No, that’s certainly not something that I have considered before.
Well, I mean, just before you completely fall in love with me, let me tell you, my penis is 3 feet long and if we ever hook up, you will die. Maybe that’s not a good idea, maybe we should just cut it off right there, it was beautiful what we had together. I love you, I love you so much, I love you so much but I can’t fuck you because you’d die. I can't, baby I’m sorry *cries*.
Oh my gosh…
Maybe we should just forget about the whole getting married and having a family thing….. *cries*. It’s cool, I’m sorry, people are always laughing at me, I’m not trying to be funny.
I hope you never meet me because just looking at me can kill you .
I’m not actually terribly scared *laughs*.
Well you sound fairly fearless.
So you guys are headed to Australia to hit Soundwave! How excited are you to thrust your legendary gruesomeness upon us?
We are amazingly excited, we have such a great time in Australia. Three years ago or whatever one of our group, the giant tyrannosaurus rex that we’ve got refused to come home. So he’s been over there out in the outback so we are looking forward to hooking up with him. We’ve got a very special show for you Aussies, it’s got some elements that are specifically tailored to your culture and you're going to love it and we will be playing great hits off of the ‘Battle Maximus’ album. It’s really going to be a freaking amazing experience, there’s a lot of great bands playing, I really look forward to it and you never know, you Australians might not want us to go home after this. In fact there’s been talk of digging a tunnel to Australia from Antarctica, which is not all that far. So we can just kind of pop in on each other all of the time.
I also hear you plan on claiming Australia? Bit of an invasion headed our way? Should we be prepared?
Well, yeah, I mean, I have already claimed the entire planet. GWAR rules this world, we just haven’t been everywhere yet, and we’re not so good with maps or with directions either. We managed to find Australia because it’s pretty large but we missed Japan several times because it’s a lot smaller you know? There’s a lot for water between where we are at and Australia, but then we figured all right, we just tunnel through the earth, it’s a much quicker route, more direct. You still have to invade what you rule every now and again because you have to teach the people who’s in charge, you know chop some heads off some politicians, crucify some celebrities, let your giant lizard run a muck. This must happen every now and then. Let’s face it these people love it because Australia is a nation filled with crazy freaks.
I’m absolutely fascinated by your stage image, what made you guys chose to run with something like this?
Well, I don’t know, we just did it. It’s who we are; it’s what we do. If you want the real story you’d have to talk to my human slave. He’ll tell you that GWAR are a bunch of old ass punk rockers and heavy metal musicians, who all formed together in an old abandoned milk bottle factory, in Richmond, Virginia around 1986/ 87 and came up with this crazy idea of …. Basically there was this crappy punk/ rock band and there was this group of artists making a bunch of costumes for a movie they wanted to make called ‘Scum Dogs of the Universe’. I was like, let’s combine both of these things, which was just for fun and it was just a joke but rapidly it started blowing up where all of a sudden the movie didn’t matter anymore and the band was GWAR. So we stopped doing everything else and put all of our energy into that. It’s had an incredible run and it’s had an incredible impact on culture and society. The cultural impact of GWAR is nothing less than staggering. It’s not a coincidence that after GWAR really crass humor became cool. After GWAR you get ‘Bevas and Butthead’ you get ‘South Park’, everything starts getting gross you know. There wouldn’t be a 'Metalocalypse', there wouldn’t be Slipknot, there wouldn’t be any of that shit if it wasn’t for GWAR but that really has not been acknowledged by the rock press or our peers. It will be one day because we are dead fucking serious when we say GWAR is a band that will last a million years not only because Oderus is immortal but because GWAR is musical theatre and just as sure as ‘West Side Story’ is been shown on Broadway tonight, GWAR will be playing shows a hundred years from now.
Hello, oh finally I’m being interviewed by an Australian woman. I have only been talking to stupid men! Are you a sexy woman? Have you ever considered having sex with an alien?
*Laughs* No, that’s certainly not something that I have considered before.
Well, I mean, just before you completely fall in love with me, let me tell you, my penis is 3 feet long and if we ever hook up, you will die. Maybe that’s not a good idea, maybe we should just cut it off right there, it was beautiful what we had together. I love you, I love you so much, I love you so much but I can’t fuck you because you’d die. I can't, baby I’m sorry *cries*.
Oh my gosh…
Maybe we should just forget about the whole getting married and having a family thing….. *cries*. It’s cool, I’m sorry, people are always laughing at me, I’m not trying to be funny.
I hope you never meet me because just looking at me can kill you .
I’m not actually terribly scared *laughs*.
Well you sound fairly fearless.
So you guys are headed to Australia to hit Soundwave! How excited are you to thrust your legendary gruesomeness upon us?
We are amazingly excited, we have such a great time in Australia. Three years ago or whatever one of our group, the giant tyrannosaurus rex that we’ve got refused to come home. So he’s been over there out in the outback so we are looking forward to hooking up with him. We’ve got a very special show for you Aussies, it’s got some elements that are specifically tailored to your culture and you're going to love it and we will be playing great hits off of the ‘Battle Maximus’ album. It’s really going to be a freaking amazing experience, there’s a lot of great bands playing, I really look forward to it and you never know, you Australians might not want us to go home after this. In fact there’s been talk of digging a tunnel to Australia from Antarctica, which is not all that far. So we can just kind of pop in on each other all of the time.
I also hear you plan on claiming Australia? Bit of an invasion headed our way? Should we be prepared?
Well, yeah, I mean, I have already claimed the entire planet. GWAR rules this world, we just haven’t been everywhere yet, and we’re not so good with maps or with directions either. We managed to find Australia because it’s pretty large but we missed Japan several times because it’s a lot smaller you know? There’s a lot for water between where we are at and Australia, but then we figured all right, we just tunnel through the earth, it’s a much quicker route, more direct. You still have to invade what you rule every now and again because you have to teach the people who’s in charge, you know chop some heads off some politicians, crucify some celebrities, let your giant lizard run a muck. This must happen every now and then. Let’s face it these people love it because Australia is a nation filled with crazy freaks.
I’m absolutely fascinated by your stage image, what made you guys chose to run with something like this?
Well, I don’t know, we just did it. It’s who we are; it’s what we do. If you want the real story you’d have to talk to my human slave. He’ll tell you that GWAR are a bunch of old ass punk rockers and heavy metal musicians, who all formed together in an old abandoned milk bottle factory, in Richmond, Virginia around 1986/ 87 and came up with this crazy idea of …. Basically there was this crappy punk/ rock band and there was this group of artists making a bunch of costumes for a movie they wanted to make called ‘Scum Dogs of the Universe’. I was like, let’s combine both of these things, which was just for fun and it was just a joke but rapidly it started blowing up where all of a sudden the movie didn’t matter anymore and the band was GWAR. So we stopped doing everything else and put all of our energy into that. It’s had an incredible run and it’s had an incredible impact on culture and society. The cultural impact of GWAR is nothing less than staggering. It’s not a coincidence that after GWAR really crass humor became cool. After GWAR you get ‘Bevas and Butthead’ you get ‘South Park’, everything starts getting gross you know. There wouldn’t be a 'Metalocalypse', there wouldn’t be Slipknot, there wouldn’t be any of that shit if it wasn’t for GWAR but that really has not been acknowledged by the rock press or our peers. It will be one day because we are dead fucking serious when we say GWAR is a band that will last a million years not only because Oderus is immortal but because GWAR is musical theatre and just as sure as ‘West Side Story’ is been shown on Broadway tonight, GWAR will be playing shows a hundred years from now.
Yeah I can believe that.
Yeah, baby you’re the enlightened one.
Are you actually having to tone down your show for Soundwave or are they going to let you run wild?
Oh no, they are encouraging us to run wild. There is no toning down a GWAR show, it only gets toned up and we have specifically tailored our show to interact with the Australian people in a new way that it’s going to blow their fucking minds. You know you can’t really play the same show that you do in America in Australia. It just wouldn’t have the same impact, you have got to include some cultural references that the Australian people can really latch on to. They want to know that the artists and musicians of GWAR went that extra mile to acknowledge the fact that they were in a different country and that’s how you win hearts and minds. When you see what we are getting ready to do… we are going to do the most awful thing ever and it’s going to be great and the fucking Australians are going to love us. We aren’t going to tell you what it is either because it has to be a surprise.
What’s the craziest show that you have ever played?
The craziest show… and I think you know at this point because I gave you some behind the scenes stuff I think your talking to Dave now, which is really weird being two people at once. When I get asked this question I always say the same thing. The craziest show we played was in East Berlin. It was just literally within a year or two after the wall being torn down and we played this metal festival and it was the first metal festival that they have had in East Berlin and GWAR played and we had to cram everything into this thirty minute set and honestly these people that had just come though 45 years of Soviet occupation… you should have seen the looks on their faces they were just so fucking blown away. They were like, “please GWAR give us out wall back!” You know we had a lot of weird shows, but the weirdest one of all was in Europe. One time we were in this abandoned meat-packing factory, we were exploring all of these rooms and we noticed it looked like all of these peoples personal possessions were still there, like they had evacuated the place really quickly. We kept finding all of these photographs of people in hazmat suits, spraying down cows and radiation symbols everywhere and we realized some kind of radioactive or some accident had happened in this place, it had been abandoned and then taken over but local punks who had been putting on shows here. We were just like … oh well whatever they got, we got. I guess the good news is we didn’t die.
You guys have just released a new record…’Battle Maximus’, can you tell me a little bit about it?
Yeah, we have, Battle Maximus rules. It’s a great fucking album and it’s our first album since we lost our great Flattus Maximus. You know a lesser band would have just collapsed because Cory Smoot or Flattus was our main song writer, kind of like the guy that lead us back into the Pantheon of metal. You know we were making all kinds of albums, playing a lot of stuff that was just all over the place and Cory was like the guy who was like look you have to stop dicking around and playing all of these funny ‘haha’ songs, we should just get metal and heavy and stick with it. We did it and all of a sudden we lost him and we were like five albums together and GWAR reclaimed its place in the metal pantheon. The making of Battle Maximus became the most important album we have ever done. It became a make or break deal. We were either going to write an album that was better than anything and stronger and show that progression or we were going to make a shitty record or not make a record at all. I was like fuck it we are going to make the best record ever and show the world the greatest fucking rock and roll band in mother fucking history. We were going to step up to the plate and knock this one out of the fucking park. We are going to use this as a platform not only to honor our fallen conrad, but also to show strength and hopefully inspire people to be able to do that same thing.
Interview by Shannen Murphy.
Yeah, baby you’re the enlightened one.
Are you actually having to tone down your show for Soundwave or are they going to let you run wild?
Oh no, they are encouraging us to run wild. There is no toning down a GWAR show, it only gets toned up and we have specifically tailored our show to interact with the Australian people in a new way that it’s going to blow their fucking minds. You know you can’t really play the same show that you do in America in Australia. It just wouldn’t have the same impact, you have got to include some cultural references that the Australian people can really latch on to. They want to know that the artists and musicians of GWAR went that extra mile to acknowledge the fact that they were in a different country and that’s how you win hearts and minds. When you see what we are getting ready to do… we are going to do the most awful thing ever and it’s going to be great and the fucking Australians are going to love us. We aren’t going to tell you what it is either because it has to be a surprise.
What’s the craziest show that you have ever played?
The craziest show… and I think you know at this point because I gave you some behind the scenes stuff I think your talking to Dave now, which is really weird being two people at once. When I get asked this question I always say the same thing. The craziest show we played was in East Berlin. It was just literally within a year or two after the wall being torn down and we played this metal festival and it was the first metal festival that they have had in East Berlin and GWAR played and we had to cram everything into this thirty minute set and honestly these people that had just come though 45 years of Soviet occupation… you should have seen the looks on their faces they were just so fucking blown away. They were like, “please GWAR give us out wall back!” You know we had a lot of weird shows, but the weirdest one of all was in Europe. One time we were in this abandoned meat-packing factory, we were exploring all of these rooms and we noticed it looked like all of these peoples personal possessions were still there, like they had evacuated the place really quickly. We kept finding all of these photographs of people in hazmat suits, spraying down cows and radiation symbols everywhere and we realized some kind of radioactive or some accident had happened in this place, it had been abandoned and then taken over but local punks who had been putting on shows here. We were just like … oh well whatever they got, we got. I guess the good news is we didn’t die.
You guys have just released a new record…’Battle Maximus’, can you tell me a little bit about it?
Yeah, we have, Battle Maximus rules. It’s a great fucking album and it’s our first album since we lost our great Flattus Maximus. You know a lesser band would have just collapsed because Cory Smoot or Flattus was our main song writer, kind of like the guy that lead us back into the Pantheon of metal. You know we were making all kinds of albums, playing a lot of stuff that was just all over the place and Cory was like the guy who was like look you have to stop dicking around and playing all of these funny ‘haha’ songs, we should just get metal and heavy and stick with it. We did it and all of a sudden we lost him and we were like five albums together and GWAR reclaimed its place in the metal pantheon. The making of Battle Maximus became the most important album we have ever done. It became a make or break deal. We were either going to write an album that was better than anything and stronger and show that progression or we were going to make a shitty record or not make a record at all. I was like fuck it we are going to make the best record ever and show the world the greatest fucking rock and roll band in mother fucking history. We were going to step up to the plate and knock this one out of the fucking park. We are going to use this as a platform not only to honor our fallen conrad, but also to show strength and hopefully inspire people to be able to do that same thing.
Interview by Shannen Murphy.
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