Blothar the Berzerker of GWAR

Interviewed by: George Archibald
Photos by: Josh Drespling

The intergalactic war machine known as GWAR has been terrorizing Earth for several decades, and fell upon Mr. Smalls Theater in Pittsburgh PA on September 14^th. The battalion of grotesque aliens have been touring relentlessly in support of their latest album, The Blood of Gods.

The mighty Blothar the Berserker has taken over the helm of these Scumdogs,with the common mission to bath fans and foes alike in blood with every song churning from the gears of their death machine.

I was able to communicate with Blothar before his campaign of decimation fell on Mr. Smalls and left behind nothing but rubble and gore.

GA: I must say, your antlers are looking mighty and majestic, can you tell me what planet you hail from, and how you came to join the ranks of GWAR?

BB: Well ,I am from The World of Mist, which is like a Viking Valhalla. I joined GWAR after Oderus passed away. There are a bunch of Scumdogs still frozen in Antarctica in this big cave, and periodically they can be thawed out and if needed be put back in on ice. Originally, I was from outer space like the rest of GWAR and banished to Earth with the other Scumdogs. The great purge of the incompetent, and unmanageable. When Oderus passed, I knew about it. In my slumber we sort of dream but are aware of what is going on. Sensing that need, I thawed out and came back to join the band again.

GA: GWAR has been decimating the United States for many, many, years; what do we the inhabitants of Pittsburgh owe the honor of your visit today?

BB: Are we in Pittsburgh? We are here to do another rock show and kill people, that is what GWAR does. Millvale is always on the list, we always have fun here, and its nice to desecrate this former house of God (referring to the venue, Mr. Smalls Theater used to be a church.) It is a small theater with very little distance between you and the audience.

GA: GWAR originally were a punk rock styled band, but have branched into metal and other genres. What do you think of the human bands that play the same style of music you have adopted?

BB: I don’t listen to a lot of metal, I listen to a lot of old shit because I am old.

(Josh Dresping, Publisher of EmpireExtreme.com): How old is the music?

BB: Fifty million years!! GWAR was a punk band, and it still is closer to punk than metal, at least in its performance aspect. Certainly, the ethos behind everything is closer to punk than any of the idiocies associated with metal. I admire bands like Watain, and their commitment to an idiotic notion of authenticity.

JD: So, no tour with Steel Panther?

BB: Steel Panther is funny. Steel Panther is different. Steel Panther is one of us. They approach the music with a sense of humor. I think that’s the key thing, even in punk. When GWAR started in punk, punk turned into this sort of pough faced contemptuous sincerity. You know a sense of seriousness that we were trying to upend, and metal is just way worse at that. That is what really bums me out about it. I really like the music. I like pretty much everything I hear that is associated with metal. Most of it is good, but there is some nu stuff out there I don’t like very much. I enjoy most of it, but the lyrics, the ideas surrounding it… it’s good to find people that are thoughtful occasionally, making the music. You do find that but by that. they are associated with something that is very puerile. I don’t know any other way to describe it, the sense of taking yourself seriously. In GWAR, what we do is the same thing we did with punk, challenge that notion of being serious.

GA: The list of celebrities and public figures GWAR has ceremonially executed is quite vast, is there any one left, or anyone who GWAR has on their hit list?

BB: There are a lot of people that deserve to die, there’s no question about that. We always find somebody new. We’ve been killing Trump night after night after night, and he turns out to be literally indestructible. It really restores your faith in the absurd, that he manages to maintain. We kill him pretty much every night; rip his guts out, smack him around, and still he comes back. As GWAR, we have killed a lot of people. I think we are going to kill the members of Widespread Panic next. The bass player offered up their crowd in his stead. I think I’ll take him out just because he’s fat, and I’m fat, and there can only be one fat dude.

GA: What do you do with the bodies and skulls of these celebrities after GWAR has their way with them?

BB: Just like everyone else, they become fodder and gristle for the GWAR machine that continues throughout space and time. Often their corpses are left hanging in the back of a dusty old studio in Richmond, Virginia. Which is kind of a fun place to walk around, because its just full of… oh there’s Jon Benet Ramsey with a big fucking dick up her butt, and the bloated corpse of Elvis. I don’t think we’ve killed Elvis. I mean there’s Sleezy (Martini) that’s kind of a cross; he looks like Elvis and acts like Colonel Parker. We’ve killed a lot of folks, and a lot of the time they kind of pile up, to the point where we have a space issue. We need to get some more storage.

GA: As an Interplanetary Warrior, what are your thoughts on peace?

BB: Peace? I don’t know this word. Peace…peas? I like peas. Hmm… peace, piece of what? What is so funny about peace, love and understanding? Peace is desirable even for GWAR, but ultimately not possible. We’ve decided to you know… if you can’t keep the blood off your hands, then you might as well shower in it.

JD: What if you ran across the “space force” in your travels?

BB: We welcome the space force. I hope that it is an army of cloned Trumps, that becomes the space force. Like Stormtroopers, where their helmets look like his hair. It would be great. We need a space force what else would we do with our money; not give it out to people that don’t have enough, it would be better to just burn it. Also, this would help us, as we are trying to find our way towards other planets. We pretend that they want these places to be habitable but in reality, we just want Earth to be disposable. If humankind manages to terraform other planets, I would be all for it, because then we would have somewhere else to put our trash.

There is this theory we have been trying to introduce; that what if there was a civilization that was more advance than there is now on this planet ages ago. We are trying to work that into the mythos, the Old Ones. It is sort of what Lovecraft was obsessed with. This idea of this sort of race of beings that managed to disappear somehow. They were always just hideously corrupt, and vile, we will be singing about it tonight.

GA: As the band’s vocalist do you do any warm up techniques or pre-show rituals to get stage ready?

BB: I masturbate languidly, until it’s time to go. Most of the day actually, my life is consumed by pornography and masturbation. No… I do vocal warm ups mostly by screaming at Beefcake the Mighty. I hate Beefcake the Mighty.

JD: Does he scream back?

BB: No, he’s too fat.

GA: GWAR’s last release was 2017’s The Blood of Gods, is the band currently working on new songs?

BB: Yes, we have songs that we are working on. There’s certainly a lot of material that wasn’t on that record, that was generated, and has yet to flow to the top. So, for sure, we just have to buckle down and do it. I think after the fall touring cycle we are going to go into a serious writing phase.

GA: Following up with that, what is next for GWAR after this touring death campaign?

BB: That’s what we are going to do, sit around and try to write more stupid music. Hopefully it will happen, our writing process involves a lot of Whip-its. A lot of Whip-its, and we sit around and ‘down’ each other ideas. No, No, No, I don’t like that, there’s a lot of that … No, No, not a lot of Yes. Yes, it’s too bad we can’t be a lot more like Yes. I do like Yes. Yes you, I like Yes.

GA: What does a berserker do in his downtime?

BB: Let’s see, I already talked about porn and masturbation. Umm… I like to fish. I fish a lot.

JD: Like with a rod and a reel?

BB: With a rod and reel yea, or you know noodling. I noodle for sharks. I go out, get in a little boat, and ride around. You see another boat, you board it forcefully, take it and tow it behind your own boat. Find enough, and you can have a train of boats, all their fishing shit, give me that shit.

GA: Where can people keep up do date with GWAR, and support the band by offering tribute or purchasing merchandise online?

BB: We have GWAR.net, we also have our presence on Indiemerch, where you can buy all kinds of stuff. We have our comic book, which if you can get it, get it, because there is a finite amount of them out there. We also have our GWAR book, a shit ton of t-shirts, and a lot of trinkets. We also have GWAR bar and there is merchandise for the bar as well. GWAR Bar stuff is actually funner to have. I like the GWAR Bar stuff. GWAR Bar is a fun place, and it has great food, and a lot of slutty chicks running around, it’s just how it is.

JD: Will there ever be another GWAR BBQ?

BB: I don’t know, depends on how much money we decide to waste. We are looking into a closed-in facility that has their own camping and such. If we can come to some sort of agreement with the people who run it, maybe. The Hadad’s Lake, the guy who ran it passed away, and it was complicated running things there because of the infrastructure. We had to pay for the facility, toilets, and security, for a turn key place. We are talking to people out of Richmond, and we are hoping it won’t be like before, where we killed ourselves. We have a lot more money now, and we need to get rid of that.

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George Archibald

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