Concert Review: GWAR 30th Anniversary Tour

There are two competing impossibilities walking into a GWAR show on this tour.  First, that the band has really been around for thirty years and where-does-the-time-go, while the second, and perhaps more impossible impossibility, is that such a band could survive, and indeed thrive, for thirty years in the first place.

The battle, such as it was, began appropriately enough with Battlecross, the raucous band of thrash upstarts who specialize in the abstract concepts of ‘loud’ and ‘fun.’  As we discussed not so long ago with the release of their recent album, Battlecross works best as a singles band who can produce electric moments.  So it stands to reason that seeing them live is essentially a gleeful highlight showcase, and such was the case on this evening.  Battlecross, when they slam into “Force Fed Lies” to lead their set, marks an important pace car for the rest of the evening.  The fury of their sound, the resounding ring of their guitar tone and the eminent pleasure they get from playing sets the bar awfully high for everyone who follows.  This trend continued whether new or old material, while singer Kyle Gunther plays his humorous hand to the crowd, extolling the virtues of purchasing a t-shirt in order to prevent your car from being destroyed by GWAR’s ‘spew.’  Within all that though, the band fired off two of their classics, one of which is an all-timer.  “Flesh and Bone” remains the most potent song in the band’s arsenal, sounding every bit as powerful and neck-ruining as it does on disc, while “Push Pull Destroy” is ever the thundering clarion of the band.  The crowd, while seemingly not wholly familiar with the band, ended up both appreciative and enthralled.

Which takes us to Butcher Babies.  There is no ambiguity to the presentation of this band and what our eyes are supposed to be attracted to.  The energetic gyrations and machinations of Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey is both enticing and alluring.  There is a certain unavoidable charisma not only in the obvious physical embellishment of the pair, but in the overflowing attitude of chaotic encouragement that permeates all that they do.  The other two band members wear nothing but common stage black, almost as though they are not allowed to have personality that might rival the dynamic duo at the front of the stage.  For all that, the pounding that characterizes all of the band’s singles and doesn’t always translate on a recorded medium works reasonably well at stirring the crowd into comparative madness.  Fan favorites like “Blonde Girls All Look the Same” and “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers” were equally adept at selling the band’s wares, both songs a flurry of flowing, dyed hair and stomping Chuck Taylors on the stage, with the accordant milling and smashing of the mosh pit below.  The set continued much in this fashion, never relenting all the way through the final note of the set’s closer “Magnolia Blvd.”

The final act of course was the thirtieth anniversary tour of GWAR, their second sojourn since the untimely passing of Oderus Urungus.  It would have been perfectly reasonable to expect that an anniversary tour would be chock full of nostalgia and random, gleefully sordid memories of yesteryear.  Say what you will about GWAR, but they have never been a band that looks backward, and so this tour would be no different. Where the last outing left us with the forlorn and failing mission to save Oderus from the perils of a time vortex he had been lost in, this new adventure picks up in a more corporeal setting.  The band, still trying to find their way in the wake of their loss, comes to find out that the internet at large is trolling them, and thus in typical somewhat-well-intentioned GWAR fashion they take steps to kill the internet.  Along the way is the usual spate of blood and gore and genuinely funny banter centered on otherwise outrageously offensive subject matter.  GWAR, as ever, is so adept at engaging in the absurd that what would be scandalously inappropriate in any other social conversation seems perfectly at home here.

The only indication that GWAR was willing to acknowledge the passing of thirty years was that they unearthed a lot of old material that fans had likely stashed away in their memory as songs that ‘GWAR doesn’t play anymore.’  Chief among these selections, to the surprise of the gathered throng, was “Jack the World” known to GWAR fans mostly as ‘that song on “This Toilet Earth” that ISN’T “Saddam A Go-Go.”  Not content to stop the memory train there, GWAR soldiered through a goodly chunk of their back musical forty, including going all the way back to heartfelt recitations of “I’m in Love (With a Dead Dog)” and “Captain Crunch” from 1988’s “Hell-O.” 

What’s important to note is that GWAR approached both new and old material (of which the balance was about an even split,) with equal fervor and dedication.  Continuing in the new GWAR workflow, the band lets different members take their assorted turns at the lead vocals, which does lend for a rangy performance.  That said, Blothar carries the bulk of the material himself, leading the collective way through “Madness at the Core of Time,” and other popular new material including the seminal “Metal Metal Land.”  In this regard, the band has lost no steam at all, each individual musician remains just as talented as ever, which has been an increasingly important trait of GWAR in the last ten years.

That said, the show still isn’t the same without Oderus.  It’s still enjoyable and highly entertaining, and watching the band tear the skin off of and defeat ‘The Internet Troll’ at the show’s climax still gives a sense of reward to the viewer; none of that has been altered.  Nevertheless, the boots of Oderus remain difficult to fill.  Not impossible, as this tour already shows the band at a greater level of cohesion than the previous, but it will take time.

In the here and now, GWAR as ever remains GWAR.  There will always be “Sick of You,” there will always be colored fluid, and it will always be a show worth seeing.  That’s really the bottom line.

Album Review: Battlecross - "Rise to Power"

On their last album “War of Wills,” Battlecross composed “Flesh and Bone,” one of the all-time great metal songs regardless of genre.  That’s right, I said ‘all-time.’  (If you disagree, I will treat you like Marvin the Paranoid Android treats the living mattresses.)  It was a song that could play in perpetuity on repeat without tiring the listener out, one of the sublime bites of music that combined unparalleled savagery with rhythmic discipline and powerful hooks.   The issue is, how does the band follow up on such a supreme accomplishment?

Their answer is the new album “Rise to Power” and the self-described ‘blue collar thrashers’ continue on the warpath of twenty-first century thrash with another effort that sounds a little like Overkill on steroids (which is itself a lofty claim, since Overkill was fairly steroidal in comparison to their contemporaries.)

Now this begs the question – does “Rise to Power” have a song on it that is the equal or dare we even suggest superior, of “Flesh and Bone?”  The short answer is no, but that alone doesn’t mean that “Rise to Power” is diminished as a whole.

If you crack a small smile at the over-the-top feel of “Rise to Power,” that’s okay.  Battlecross seems to demonstrate an implicit understand that thrash is an over-the-top genre, long steeped in intentional ridiculousness and perfectly apt for trying to inject nine pounds of personality into a two-pound bag.

Like all Battlecross efforts, there are singles on this new stack of songs that rise above the common din of their brethren.  Once or twice an album, the Michiganders (finally got to use that in context, yes!) put together the pieces in just the right order and really show the fans the full arsenal of their talent.  For this album, it’s “Scars” and “Despised.”  The former leads the album with a surge of electric fury, the customary Battlecross hook riffs displayed prominently over the percussive gunfire that punctuates the pulse of every track from beginning to end.  The later shows the more artistic side of Battlecross’ thrash sensibilities, as we are subjected to a mix of cadences ranging from full throttle mayhem to headbanging cannon fodder.  It’s a song that probably doesn’t sound like much to the casual observer, but thrash aficionados will come to dissect the layers and see the orchestration of the sections come to life.

The other edge of that sword is that while the band can transcend in multiple moments, the remaining moments are simply average.  Many of the cuts on “Rise to Power” contain all the requisite elements of modern thrash, but are left wanting for personality or flair.  The split audio during the opening of “Spoiled” is a great gimmick that’s easy to fall for, but a song can’t be carried solely by a gimmick and the early promise of the song’s throwback riff is ultimately unfilled.  Same goes for “Blood and Lies” which feeds us a great build-up conjuring images of the high-concept thrash classics of yesteryear, but then sort of fizzles out into just another Battlecross song.

The good parts of “Rise to Power” outnumber the bad and average on the whole, though perhaps only by a narrow margin.  Thrashers who just can’t consume enough will appreciate the excellent pacing and to-the-hilt noisy arrangements, which have become the hallmark of the band’s best material.  Whether or not this record is an unmitigated success is a different question and will really only be resolved by the predilections of reach individual listener.