The day started out cheerfully, as I joined the Brutal one in the line, and chatted with a few of his aquaitances, making light of Joe’s military situation and such. The line was incredibly slow, due to the fact that made us go through a metal detector (and that’s something you better get used to folks in the wake of recent events which I do not need to remind you of).

The body searching process was so lengthy that my friend Lucas wasn’t even able to get into the oversold club until after the second opening band (Dying Fetus) finished playing. And a whole lot more people weren’t able to get in at all.

The first opening band was All that Remains. At first I thought that they didn’t really fit in on this tour, but I was damn wrong. I’ve seen those guys two times before (first time they opened for the disbanded The Crown, second time they opened for God Forbid). I was very dissapointed the second time I saw them by their sound, though I like their music. So I did not expect much from them this time around, though to their credit, last time they played at a venue that’s infamous for their bad sound. To my great surprize they upped their game and came out sounding fucking great, with tons of energy; they played new songs which were very heavy. The lead guitar player’s solos were impressive and very melodic.

Then it was time for the death/grind legends… The moshing during Dying Fetus’s set was terrifyingly violent. At one point of time the entire venue went crazy and I ended up being in the middle of the pit for two songs. I had two beers and a shot of tequila so I was slightly buzzing and somehow mustured the confidence to stay in the pit and dance with the skinheads. I got jabbed in the ribs, kicked in the shins and knees, punched in the face and head, dropped to the floor two times; my right shoe came flying off (but miraculously I was able to recover it by quickly slipping my foot back in with the agility of a cheetah amongst all the chaos)…. Needless to say, I am in a lot of pain right now and have bruises all over my body. Although there was something very satisfying and primal about being a human bowling keg, I felt that I unwinded enough after two songs, and this huge skinhead that was literally a pile of muscle kept pushing me and calling me a “fucking pussy” because I didn’t go back in. He may very well have a point, but I’d rather be a fucking pussy than a dead one. Dying Fetus was heavy as balls and the music was very technical, although I have to admit this kind of music is not really my thing.

Finally, the time came for the legendary Gwar. I would’ve said there was a huge pit during their set, but there wasn’t one due to the fact that the club was so overcapacitated by the time they went on that there was no space to mosh at all. People were all pressed against one another drenching sweat, unable to move. It got very claustrophobic while waiting for the band to go on, and quite a few people got violated.

I’ve never seen Gwar live before, but from accounts of my friends I had a slight idea of what to expect - I knew it was going to be fun and gory, but in no way did I expect to witness such an outrageous, spectacular event.

The music was fairly average (although I am impressed that they were able to execute their songs with complete precision, wearing their heavy suits of armor). Then again, if you go to see Gwar for their music something’s seriously wrong with you. Their stage show is very elaborate, and although every song consists pretty much of a monster coming out on stage and getting mauled by the band members and their helpers, they did it in so many different and fun ways, I was very impressed with their gory imagination. The first person that they desecrated was a giant 10-feet tall puppet of Paris Hilton. It soon followed with similarly sized puppets of Osama Bin Laden, Michael Jackson, Dubya Bush along with funny audio clips. Watching a giant Dubya puppet getting beheaded by Oderus Urungus was a highlight of the show, and of my life!

I have to say that the members of Gwar are either utter simpletons or brilliant social commentators because their crazy antics, although very exaggerated, reflect the feelings of thousands of people. It’s probably a combination of the latter and the former, but they sure were funny as fuck.

At one point they performed a similar assault on Scott Peterson’s wife, which was admittedly wrong (the fact that I can’t remember her name right now just shows how demented and ass-backwards our media and society is, there’s an observation of my own), but I couldn’t help but laugh when they cut her stomach open and then pulled out the fetus and killed him too. Alright, it’s fucking sick and insensetive. But this is Gwar we’re talking about damnit!

Finally they topped it off with their signature bit where Oderus Urungus rubbed his giant prosphetic phallus to the point of explosion and squirted red liquid all over the auidence from it. Thankfully though I was standing in the back where the sound engeneers were sitting and they wisely covered their soundboards with plastic, which I used as an umbrella to shield me from the crimson rain. After much cheering and chanting from the crowd, they came back for an ancore, and did about five more songs, annihilating in the process a giant mech-warrior looking thing, a homosexual cave troll, and some other funny characters. All in all, this was a show I will never forget.

This entry was posted by Deathshred King on Sunday, 3rd April, 2005 at 10:29 and is filed under Live Performances, GWAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response below. You may view a   printable version of this page. You may download this page in   PDF format.