Get in on the joke
GWAR has turned fake blood, alien monsters and heavy metal into something approaching a cultural institution.
There will be people walking into Chelsea's Live on Wednesday night in the tidiest of white T-shirts.
They will leave looking like they've been murdered.
And they'll love every bloody minute of it.
Why it matters: That helps explain the seemingly inexplicable longevity of GWAR, the grotesquely costumed heavy metal act that has spent four decades cultivating a remarkably loyal following. The music matters. But the real attraction may be belonging to one of popular culture's longest-running inside jokes.
Meanwhile, in Antarctica: GWAR emerged from Richmond's underground art scene in the mid-1980s, when art students, filmmakers and punk musicians began combining homemade monster costumes, absurd mythology and music.
The premise: They're barbaric intergalactic warriors banished to Earth, frozen in Antarctica and eventually unleashed upon humanity.
Just go with it.
It's theater: You don't really hear GWAR. You see them.
- A GWAR concert includes elaborate costumes, monsters, dismemberments, satire and copious quantities of fake blood and other fluids sprayed into the crowd.
- The band's Bob Gorman offers this explanation for the spectacle: GWAR is really an art collective that discovered people would pay to see rock 'n' roll, even if they might not pay to see an art installation.
Meet the Bohabs: That's what GWAR's most devoted fans call themselves. And the audience isn't merely watching the joke. It's participating in it.
- The legendary heavy metal shock-rock band brings its theatrical live spectacle to Chelsea's Live on Wednesday, Sept. 23. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Ages 18 and up. $35 advance; $40 day of show. Tickets at chelseaslive.com.
- Showing up, knowing the mythology and getting soaked are part of the ritual.
- A filmmaker interviewed for a GWAR retrospective compared the experience to Rocky Horror: the ridiculousness isn't something fans overlook. It's precisely what they came for.
And generations keep joining them.
- GWAR survived its brief brush with mainstream fame in the 1990s, changing musical fashions and even the death of co-founder and longtime frontman Dave Brockie in 2014. What remained was the community built around the spectacle.
The bottom line: Forty years later, GWAR's greatest trick may not be convincing people that alien barbarians play heavy metal.
It's making people want to be in on the joke.