Gwar - RagNaRok
(download)
It's amazing how many people I meet who don't know that Gwar is a real band. Most my age remember the scene in Empire Records where Ethan Embry freaks out on special brownies (extra sugar) and thinks he's watching himself being eaten by a stage prop. Apparently some interpret that his hallucination is the whole video - not just his involvement.
Gwar was, and will always be, metal; this album, however, strays in a different musical direction. This eponymous track, for instance, has some early-version rap-rock with a bit of funk style on one of the main guitar lines. It was a period of odd experimentation for the band, having recently come down from an unexpected explosion of popularity that quickly waned once first-time fans figured out that, yes, all of their stuff is crazy and offensive and gory. What's truly unfortunate is the limited numbers of people that appreciate how excellent and necessary it is to have a band like Gwar. You need the lunatics wearing giant fake penises and pretending to bleed all over the audience. Someone's got to sing about how much fun it will be to have a fuck-fest while destroying the planet during armageddon. It's an equalizing force to have such a stark example of the extreme. There is no other band that can really pull off what Gwar does. Jesus sucks because he's a meat sandwich. Some guy had sex with a cow so he could get the chance to be pissed on by Zog. Happy Death-Day. This is all some seriously weird shit. Coming from them, it's completely normal.That, and downright hilarious.