Blowin’ Wind with GWAR’s Oderus Urungus: “If Miley Cyrus is what’s shocking people, GWAR needs to get back out there in the worst possible way as soon as we can.”

TrayFor over 20 years, Antarctica metal legends GWAR have been terrorizing, sacrificing, raping, and pillaging metal fans all over the world.  Over the course of their career, GWAR has dealt with many members coming and going but in 2011 the band was dealt a huge blow with the sudden passing of Flattus Maximus (aka. Cory Smoot).  In true GWAR fashion, the band marched forward with their heads held high in their commarade’s honor and finished out their tour before heading back to Slave Pit Headquarters to regroup.  GWAR fans rallied and banded together and fueled the band with undying support.  The band announced that their new guitarist Pustulous Maximus would be filling the void allowing GWAR to continue their cosmic journey to world domination.

This year GWAR will release their 13th album “Battle Maximus” and will be hitting the road soon in support of it.  I was lucky enough to have the honor of talking with Oderus Urungus for the 2nd time in my now complete life.  We talked about the new album, what we can expect from their upcoming tour, his thoughts on Miley Cyrus’ awesome dancing and all else in between.  As always, it was an awesome time catching up with Oderus and it’s just reassuring to know that I am on his good side.  Hopefully that side is not behind or in front of him.  Read on slaves.  Read on.

Hello?

Hey!  This is Oderus, sorry I missed your call!

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I hope you’re not calling me collect from Antarctica because if you are that would really suck.

[laughs] No No No!  The label pays for everything.

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It’s great to talk to you man.  It’s been a while.

Yes it has been a while.  Today is GWAR interview day.  We’ve got about 12 to do today.  You’re #6 so we’re about half way through so I’m not completely fed up with doing these things just yet.

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Well good.  I’m sure that will change after this one.

[laughs] Ah, we shall see.

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Last time we talked GWAR was here supporting “Bloody Pit of Horror” at the Masquerade.

Ahhh, the Masquerade.  One of my favorite dumps.

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Looks like you guys will be back here in October.

Yes, even with that large pole in the middle of the goddamn stage we’ll be there rockin’ out!

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With GWAR playing so close to Halloween, I was curious if you guys maybe considered wearing costumes for the show?

Costumes? For GWAR to wear costumes we’d have to dress up like human beings and I’d have to wear a shirt and sneakers and shit like that.

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Yeah, but its Halloween.  Get into the spirit.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll dress up like Pac Man.  Do they still have Pac Man?  Give me a goddamn costume and I’ll fucking do it.

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Oderus, let’s talk about current events.  What do you think of the whole Miley Cyrus thing and her awesome dancing?

Honesty, that people would even get upset by that display.  It wasn’t’ really sexy and it didn’t take any fucking talent.  She looked like a fucking retard.  Is that what shocks people nowadays?  If Miley Cyrus is what’s shocking people, GWAR needs to get back out there in the worst possible way as soon as we can.

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I’m still trying to wrap my head around why that was even news.  Have people forgotten what’s scary and shocking these days?

Some dude in Syria just gassed like 3000 of his own people and what are people in American concerned about?  Miley Cyrus and her idiotic display of, “Look, I’m a fucking retard.”  There’s no figuring it out.  It will never make any fucking sense.  I thought it was pathetic.

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What I really want to know is what Oderus would’ve done if Miley Cyrus twerked on him.

Oh well.  I probably would’ve stuck it up her butthole.  She does have a nice ass.  She would’ve been raped and abused for sure.  I’m totally tempted to put her in the GWAR show.

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In other news worth topics, I have to ask if Anthony Weiner has been texting you photos or anything lately.

No, no Weiner texts to me.  He doesn’t want to have his compared against mine because then he would obviously be very upset and suffer in comparison.  He definitely cannot measure up.

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So Dragon Con just happened here in Atlanta and it’s too bad that GWAR was not here to kill all of the hipster zombies that were in attendance.

We used to do Dragon Con all the time but finally we got sick to death of playing at 5am for people who had no idea of how to put on a rock n’ roll show to begin with.  Maybe one day we’ll be back.

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GWAR just did the GWAR-B-Q in Virginia.  I wish I could’ve made it this year but how gwarbq2013logowas it?

It was absolutely the greatest one yet.  It was the biggest, baddest, most incredible one yet.  We had the X-Cops reunion, we had Municipal Waste, we had the Spew Olympics, we had way more people than ever.  It was great.  We had GWAR Beer, GWAR-B-Q sauce.  It was just a tremendous amount of fun and I believe it took me a week to recover from it.  After it was over I just crawled into my coffin and laid there for a week.

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I’d love to go next year but if I do go can we cook up Nancy Grace?

[laughs] Oh that would be great wouldn’t it?  I love that little handcuff necklace that she wears every now and then.  That’s pretty tasteful.

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Do you think she’s trying to make a statement with that?

Nah, I just think she’s a disgusting parasite.  Look at all the time they spent on that Jodi Arias idiot.  People get killed all the time but hey, there’s a hot broad with big tits.  Let’s watch this!

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So you mentioned an X-Cops reunion at the GWAR-B-Q and I’m a huge X-Cops fan.  What are the chances of seeing a full reunion tour and maybe an album?

I don’t know.  I wouldn’t mind doing another X-Cops record.  Officer Al Depantsia has written a bunch of new songs.  I’m not really sure if we’re about to go back on tour any time soon.  We’ll probably keep it pretty limited but I can see the X-Cops possibly doing a new album.  I think there are a lot of people out there who would love to see another X-Cops album so I wouldn’t mind it.

This is an exciting time to be a GWAR fan.  After the passing of Flattus Maximus it was really awesome to see the metal community pull together to support the band and his immediate family.  It made me feel proud to be a fan of a band.  When you saw that outpouring of love how did it make you feel?

Well, it made us feel very proud to have such awesome fans.  They weren’t going to let us fail or stop and they were going to support us every step of the way.  They all came out and showed us how much they really love us and it really meant a lot to us.  We couldn’t have done it without their strength and we may have never made it through that period.  There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t miss Flattus but somehow we’ve made it through and Pustulous Maximus is settled in his new position and he’s kicking fucking ass.  Life goes on.

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Pustulus-MaximusWhat can you tell us about Pustulous Maximus and what can we all expect to see from him?

Well, he’s a little bigger than Flattus.  He’s a little more obnoxious and meaner.  He’s a little more rowdy on stage and he breaks more stuff.  His guitar playing is a big more vicious as well.  He’s a different player than Flattus.  Flattus has a smoother shredding style whereas Pustulous is just all over the fucking place.  He’s capable of playing the smooth shit but yet he can play incredibly vicious as well.  His sound has definitely taken GWAR into a new direction musically.  I’m not exactly sure what that direction is.  Maybe even a little more like our old school thrash metal kind of sound.  It definitely doesn’t sound like Bloody Pit of Horror that’s for sure.

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Speaking of, I’ve been listening to the new album Battle Maximus a good bit and I fucking love this album.  It sounds more like the old school stuff than anything GWAR’s done in years.  Was that intentional or was this brought on by the new blood, pun intended?

[laughs] No, it just kind of happened naturally.  We just kind of let it kind of rally behind Pustulous’ playing and we didn’t try to make it go in any direction.  We just let it kind of organically suggest itself.  That’s the way Pustulous sounds when he plays guitar so there for GWAR followed right along with him.  It’s got the sound of those old GWAR albums but it has the additional excellence of the fact that it sounds better.  We’ve been in the studio longer and we know what we’re doing now.  We’ve got our own studio and we know exactly how to get the best sounds out of it.  It’s got that old school GWAR sound that everyone likes but it sounds better than all the old records.

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As a long time GWAR fan, this is the album I really wanted to hear.  It’s just nice to know that GWAR isn’t running out of any ideas.

No, I don’t think so.  When you’re undying, God-like beings from outer space you better not run out of ideas or eternity is going to get pretty fucking boring.

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Every band has an album that fans identify with as a the album that best represents them.  From your standpoint, what album do you feel best represents everything that GWAR is about?

Uh, you know, as strange as it’s going to sound, I would say that it would have to be the latest album.  It is the closest thing we have to what GWAR sounds like now and I believe it’s got the best mix of all the different songwriting styles that GWAR has gone through.  I think it’s been a long time since there’s been a new GWAR album and this one is getting the most positive reaction than any GWAR album I’ve ever seen.

After 20+ years and 13 albums, how hard is it to make a set list for a tour?

Well, we try to get a balance in there.  Even with 13 records you’re not going to get one song from every album so you’ve got to just pull your favorite songs from your favorite records and just mush them in with a whole bunch of killing and slaughtering.  I mean, the set lists just kind of write themselves after a while.

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Is there a particular song that rarely or never has made it to the live front that you wish would do so?

There are so many songs that we’ve done I can’t even remember ½ of them anymore.  You know, I’d sure love to see “Preschool Prostitute” come back.  “Je M’appelle Jaques Cousteau” would be awesome.  “Let’s Blame the Light Man.”  There are so many fucking GWAR songs.  Fuck man, I don’t know [laughs].

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Looking back on GWAR’s vast catalog is there anything you look at and say, “I wish we would’ve done that differently?”

Nah, I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.  If you change anything about GWAR you might ruin something that was incredibly perfect.  I’m not really how GWAR started to begin with but I do know that it’s hard to change or mess around with it very much.  You could ruin that balance that made it so great to begin with.  I’ve been completely satisfied with everything we’ve done.  I wouldn’t change a Goddamn thing.

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So many bands have those kind of regrets so I have to say I love that you wouldn’t change a thing.  There’s nothing worse than hearing a band answer that question and have them say they wanted to change something that I really loved about that band.

Exactly.  We wouldn’t change a fucking thing man [laughs].  A lot of people seem to think that we hate our more silly records like We Kill Everything.  We don’t hate those records.  They’re just records that we made at that point in time and we’re a completely different sounding band in this time.

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With GWAR’s upcoming tour, what can we expect to see and who can we expect to see being completely annihilated?

The monster from the future this year is the Hideous Mr. Perfect who is getting ready to come back through time and steal from GWAR the secret for eternal life.  Basically, he’s coming through time to chop off my balls and we’re not going to have that.  Of course he has all kinds of super power creatures that hang out with him and of course there will be the regular selection of idiotic celebrities, political figures, and religious leaders that will also get their fucking asses kicked.

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Just another GWAR show!

[laughs] Just another GWAR show.  Sickening metallic blood rock, sickening monsters beating the shit out of each other and, oh I don’t know, Justin Bieber being crucified?

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GWAR not too long ago released a great cover of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”  Are there any future covers that we can look forward to hearing GWAR unleash on us?

Right now we are working on a cover of “Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car” by Billy Ocean for the AV Club.  We did Kansas’ “Carry on My Wayward Son” last year so we’re doing this one this year.  Matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you see an entire GWAR covers album at some point.

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Does GWAR have any plans to release a DVD that will be beaten out of a Grammy by Annie Lenox?

[laughs] Oh fuck man.  Yeah, we’re going to do some more video stuff.  We’ve got a new video for “Madness at the Core of Time.”  We’ll have a video coming out from the GWAR-B-Q that we just did.  Yeah, there are all kinds of things going but as far as beating Annie Lenox, I’d rather just beat her with a club than let the Grammy’s do that.

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Finally, what is one metal album that nobody should go without owning?

Slayer’s “Reign in Blood.”  That one or the first Black Sabbath album.  One of those two.  Or maybe Motorhead’s “No Sleep till Hammersmith.”  They’re all great!

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Oderus, thanks so much for doing this interview my friend and I’ll be seeing you in Atlanta.

Thanks a lot Don.  Bye bye!

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The Brainfart & Dave Brockie (aka. Oderus Urungus)

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