Jolt Country

For the uninitiated, GWAR appears to be little more than a bunch of guys with sophomoric humor dressed as monsters and spraying audiences with various bodily fluids while rocking out. It is only after watching this two hours documentary that I now understand... well that's exactly what GWAR is.

The roots of GWAR can be traced back to a rental coincidence, where two tenants of a local artist/band creative space decided to combine forces. One renter was a local punk band, headed by the irreplaceable Dave Brockie. Next door was an art collective who were busy making costumes for a movie they wanted to make. Both groups contained art school dropouts, and once night after the band borrowed the neighbor's costumes (so that they could open for themselves in disguise), GWAR was born.

This is It traces the history of the band, which is confusing at times due to the band's large number of members (a dozen?) and previous members ("over a hundred," according to them). The directors do a pretty good job of only covering the major players, but even at that it can be easy to lose track as to who was/is who in the band.

Like most bands, things were fun behind the scenes until they weren't. Over time members come and go and we get to hear those stories. I was unaware that multiple performers played the same characters over time. At the core of the band was a power struggle between lead singer Brockie and the developer of the concept, Hunter Jackson. Amid that struggle, other members come and go, one gets shot, and another one dies in his bunk on the tour bus. What begins as a big fun party loses focus as individual members began scrapping over attention and money.

At the center of all of this is lead singer Brockie who, as Oderus Urungus, is largely the heart, soul, comedy, and voice of the band. Brockie was largely unmanageable, but despite the tales of his three-day acid trips and that time he showed up on tour dressed as The Terminator and refused to break character for four months, he always showed up to gigs on time and brought everything... until he didn't. Brockie died from a heroin overdose in 2014.

The documentary ends with a "where are they now" segment, along with one of the members who previously quit the band but returned to take over as the lead singer after Brockie's untimely demise. 95% of the documentary talks about how Brockie couldn't be replaced, until he was.

GWAR's latest albu, The New Dark Ages, was released in June 2022.

This is GWAR is currently streaming on Shudder.

Reporter: Your act has been described as "obscene" and "disgusting." What do you say about that?
Band member in full costume: Hmm... Very accurate.

They've been around so long, they had footage of the Wally George show. That's over 30 years ago.
And even got Al Yankovic to comment (compared to these guys, he can't possibly be "weird.")

Weird Al and GWAR have a long history of mutual respect. Al even "appeared" in the GWAR cartoon.

I haven't watched this yet but plan to. I miss ol' Dave, man. I have had a hard time listening to them often since he did. Aside from seeing GWAR many times and DBX once (Dave, Mike, and Brad with no costumes playing different material) every time I ran into Dave in person (3 times I think) he was always extremely nice and goofy. Bought a shot or 2 for him even after he showed up 2 hours late to the DBX show because he claimed it was his birthday. Walked "backstage" (it wasn't much of a stage) to talk to him about his new bass guitar and he was totally cool rather than being all "Hey what are you doing back here?!". And because he claimed it was his birthday, my ex-wife spanked him on stage.. HARD.

I have an autograph laying around somewhere where I ran into him months after that. He drew a little sketch of Oderous and wrote: "To Mikey.. my ass still hurts!" Damn I miss that guy..