Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

I need to preface this blog with some information. I am not a “metal head.” Nor am I a person who even normally goes to concerts. I do enjoy music, and I can get into some of the fringes of hard rock and trance or techno, but still, metal in and of itself is not something that I usually listen to. Yet, when my friends insisted I come with them down to Myrtle Beach for a GWAR concert, I was perversely interested. I mean, I had heard of GWAR, and I knew there was something to do with monster-aliens and lots of blood and gore and a strange stage show. But oh, how little did I truly know.

Well, let us start with a little bit about GWAR for those who don’t know. GWAR is a band started twenty-five years ago in Richmond, VA by what I can only imagine were the only five metal-head/geeks in the city. This, of course, is not the story we saw in the ten-minute opening featurette. No, GWAR was found in the ice of Antartica by a pimp who was fleeing the authorities after inventing crack cocaine. He got them high, and they became a band that regularly massacred their fans. Despite this, they became huge, went through drug problems, rehab, and intergalactic warfare.

After the featurette, the band itself came on in full costume, from a character with a bear-trap for a head to a monstrous demon with a rather large, um, member. They started playing, and I honestly could not understand a word that was being said, but I still got the gist, especially during the story-sections which were not sung and thus understandable. GWAR had finally repaired their spaceship and, after stocking up on plenty of crack, were finally off to rejoin their scumdog compatriots in ravaging the universe.

About that time, an (evil?) robot named Cardinal Sin sprays GWAR and the audience with a virus that will turn them good and righteous, and if not cured, all GWAR will be able to play would be Christian Rock. And thus begins the quest, including the torture and mutilation of one of Cardinal Sin’s lackies on stage, a fight with a re-incarnated Michael Jackson and the strange, mutant love-child created between Michael and the lead singer, Oderus Urungus. They then kill the baby, as it contained the cure, crash back on Earth, fight and destroy Cardinal Sin, then slink off to snort some crack. The encore show included them decapitating a caricature of Obama (who had been trying to congratulate them on saving the Earth) and Oderus, um, spraying the audience.

Perhaps you can understand my brain-melty-ness and why it has taken me nearly two weeks to write about this. What really shocks me, though, was that there was some actual meaning behind the show. It was a satirical look at several perceptions, as well as flying-in-the-face of what is considered normal. So, taken with that, they actually double-qualify as sci-fi, at least in my book. Not only are there the sci-fi elements in the spaceships, alien band members, and monstrous robots, but they are taking a step back in abstraction and discussing society and issues therein. Is it Heinlein or Asimov? Of course not, but I somehow doubt the crowd that is enjoying GWAR is likely to read Starship Troopers anytime soon.

And speaking of the crowd, they’re another thing that surprised me. I was with several metal-show vets, and supposedly the mosh pit was beyond civil, as mosh pits go and in a good mosh pit way. Yes people were still flinging each other about like a large-scale demonstration of molecular movement in a confined space, but everyone was quick to help out someone who fell or lost a shoe. As far as I know, there was only one semi-serious injury at the show, and that wasn’t even in the pit. Kind of goes towards a theory I’ve always nurtured that social geeks (the ones who go to big cons, shows, etc) are more likely to be courteous and awesome to each other than the average non-geek.

But, moral of the story aside, GWAR was something definitely from out of this world, even if not quite in the way their mythos would depict it. I have a feeling I will probably go and see another of their shows, although I will probably not be standing a few feet from the stage the next time so I can better watch the show instead of being deafened and covered in strange liquids. And I say to you, if you have even a mild tendency towards metal and you are a geek, check them out next time they are in your area. If anything, it is an experience you will not find anywhere else.

Pictures from http://www.gwar.net/media.


Richard Fife is a blogger, writer, and finally able to hear again. You can find more of his ramblings and some of his short stories at http://RichardFife.com.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Richard Fife

Author

Learn More About
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments