Interview with GWAR; Vocalist Oderus Urungus Talks ‘Battle Maximus’, Who’s on His Hit List, and that Lethal Appendage

“Satan was no pushover. And he runs the entertainment industry.” You can’t keep a good band down. GWAR, Antarctica’s wart-laden, heavy metal titans, are testament that when earthly tragedy hits, you keep plodding on. The recently released album Battle Maximus is dedicated to departed guitarist Flattus Maximus and tells the next chapter of the GWAR story. Battle Maximus was recorded in GWAR’s brand-new Slave Pit Studios. PureGrainAudio interrupted GWAR vocalist Oderus Urungus just as he was finishing lunch.

Oderus! Are you done with your meatloaf?
Oderus Urungus: I don’t understand how you humans can eat that shit. Balsac [the Jaws of Death] dared me. He’s like, “This is what humans eat. Hold on! Don’t eat that baby! Just check this out. This is what humans eat.” I gagged. Fuckin’ Stouffer’s frozen meatloaf made me gag. I never gag. I can suck up on a whale dick and not gag.

Congratulations on the new album, Battle Maximus. It kicks ass.
Oderus Urungus: Fucking A, man. What can I say? We have pretty high opinions of ourselves and I think I’m great, but that record’s even better than I thought it would be, which was already awesome.

Very tight musicianship there. The band sounds as good as ever.
Oderus Urungus: Well, thank you. That’s very nice to hear, and I tell you, it’s a sentiment shared by many: this feeling of the mastery and dominance of GWAR and the enduring strength and power of our music. And the ability to stare death straight in the face and kick it in the nuts. These are things that people respect and love and admire about us.

Pustulus Maximus plays lead guitar, right?
Oderus Urungus: He’s our new lead guy. Pustulus of the Maximus Clan, who all play guitar. That’s why Flattus had a job. Back when we were hanging out in the Scumdog War Fleet, everybody knew the Maximus guy played guitar. And we’d sit there in the hall of the giant war barge, getting ready to invade a planet or something and Flattus would be playing away and we’d be singing colloquial songs about our distant homelands. It was like out of a World War II movie, you know? There was something really beautiful about it. But if I’d have known it would one day lead to us, fucking, inventing heavy metal, it would’ve blown my mind.

Check out the song “Madness at the Core of Time”

Aside from your taste in heavy metal, where do you draw inspiration from musically?
Oderus Urungus: The reason we make metal, and the reason we made the sounds that we did–and the thing is–a lot of people would be like, “Well, how did you make metal when you weren’t even awake yet–when that first Sabbath album dropped?” And that’s because we were manipulating the minds. We have a mind, like a telepathic linkage with all the human beings, all the human race collectively, because, of course, we did create you by fucking apes and this is something I must remind people of constantly. We are your parents, so to speak, and you are our retarded baby. And you see how horrible the results are, and that’s why we must destroy you. Quite frankly, we are ashamed of ourselves for creating you.

But anyway, to get back to the music part, the reason we made metal is because it was the sound closest to the sound of a Scumdog War Fleet dis-gorging a pre-invasion bombardment; the roar of a hundred plasma cannons, which is a sound (laughs) that pretty much sounds like a good heavy metal song. So that’s why we did it, but we had no idea that everyone else was going to do it, too. Yeah, when we woke up bands like Slayer were already out we were like, “Whoa, these humans have been busy. And some of this shit is pretty fuckin’ good.” It took about ten years to fully thaw out. I mean, when we did America Must be Destroyed, I remember still, just bathing in lava trying to get that frigid, frigid freeze out of us. We have finally completely loosened up now, and we kind of let it all go on this new album and just fuckin’ attacked it with all our ferocity and vigor, determined not to let any setback deter us from our mission. And indeed it gives us an opportunity, once again, to improve our enduring mastery.

Indeed. On the song, “They Swallowed the Sun,” you really show off your lyrical ability. Tell me the story behind that song.
Oderus Urungus: Well, “They Swallowed the Sun” is another chapter in the story of GWAR’s struggle against Mr. Perfect. And it tells us Mr. Perfect desired to build this gigantic machine in the planet Earth. And basically what he does is he enshrouds the planet–this all happens in the future, of course–he enshrouds the planet in a metallic cocoon of solar panels and he harnesses the power of the sun to drive a gigantic engine which blows earth out of orbit and actually into the sun. So really it would be more like “The Sun Swallows You,” if you wanted to take it totally literally. But, considering you can’t do that with a mind like Mr. Perfect. His plan is completely beyond, maybe, even, my comprehension. I don’t understand, but maybe that’s what he had to do to travel through time. We’re not time lords yet. That’s one thing. We can see time moving in all directions, but we can’t control it. We can slow it down, speed it up, but we do not have mastery over it. It seems like Mr. Perfect did. By swallowing the power of the sun he moved through time to attack GWAR. That’s kind of the story about that song.

How much do you hate Mr. Perfect?
Oderus Urungus: Oh, well I don’t just hate him. I hate everything he represents as well. Hatred isn’t a good enough word for it. In fact there’s only one word for it. I feel GWAR towards him. I feel very GWAR toward Mr. Perfect and he needs to be GWAR-ed very, very badly. And he will be every night on this tour and you’ll get to see it, which will be even better. Him and his entire mutated master race must be stamped out and as soon as we figure out how to go forward in time, we’re going to go get the rest of those fuckers.

I heard that he’s going to be eating out his own ass nightly onstage.
Oderus Urungus: I will make sure that happens, after I get done eating his ass out. I get firsties. I expect to be fighting him a lot, repeatedly, in the near future.

Who else will fall to the wrath of GWAR in the near future?
Oderus Urungus: Well, we have been fighting Jesus and God for the last couple of years and we’ve finally proven to the entire world and ourselves that he does not exist and Jesus has survived death so many times now. That power is highly overrated, even his attempt to come back as Super Cyborg, Jesus was a complete failure and GWAR’s ready to move on to our new album and our new shows, and of course, our new victims. GWAR’s contempt is for the religious community, and not necessarily the faith of those who desperately need something like that to believe in. But that’s what GWAR’s about. I’d say in a way that we’re a religion. We are living gods. We must be worshipped. But don’t waste your time with these false prophets and gods that don’t exist. Our hatred and our public displays of cruelty regarding this are well-documented, and I can assure our followers that our hatred toward the church remains undiminished. We’ll continue to express our contempt for it, both musically and visually.

What do you think is the most beautiful sound on Earth?
Oderus Urungus: The sound of jizzmogloben exploding from my penis, if you can call it a penis. The sound of an orgasm. As long as it’s mine.

Does the sound occur right at the moment of release?
Oderus Urungus: Yes, at the moment of release, but it must be accompanied by the roar of GWAR and the shriek of the dying as they’re bathed in my acidic goo. That’s probably my favorite noise. I’m a noisy guy. I’d have to say second is the sound of my own voice, which, obviously I’m in love with. After that it just goes on and on and on. Some things you might find obscure like the sound of a homeless person’s shopping cart, bouncing down the street after he’s hit by a truck. Things like that.

You claim to be something like 40 billion years old.
Oderus Urungus: I just celebrated my fifty-millionth birthday, but that, of course, is in human years. In Scumdog time I’m negative 13.

Check out the song “Zombies, March!”

You’re lying.
Oderus Urungus: No. I don’t look it, do I?

You don’t. What’s the secret to that youthful look of yours?
Oderus Urungus: Alcohol. Continual diet of drinking booze. Yes, it is a great preservative. What do they put organs in when they’re transplanted into other people’s bodies? Alcohol! There must be something to that, right?

Hey, Iron Maiden has a new ale called Trooper. Have you had any yet?
Oderus Urungus: No I haven’t found it yet, but if I had some Trooper I’d drink it till I was in a stupor. We brewed some of our own beer GWAR entitled, creatively enough, GWAR Beer. That was a big hit. We sold the shit out of that stuff at the GWAR-B-Q. Made a huge pile of flaming money out of what we got.

What was the alcohol content in GWAR Beer?
Oderus Urungus: It was a 5.5. I lobbied for it to be an 80 or a 90, but apparently it isn’t beer at that point. Yeah, I can’t get drunk on beer. I have to chug Jagermeister, Fireball, Dewar’s, Maker’s Mark. Crown Royal’s another biggie on the bus. We’re a bunch of drunks.

Do you guys drink Black Tooth Grins as well?
Oderus Urungus: Every drink conceivable. Every human pleasure that you guys enjoy nightly for fourteen dollars a pop, we got vats full of it here in Antarctica. We have giant pools of Black Tooth Grin that we just go swimming in.

That sounds luxurious.
Oderus Urungus: Yeah, but difficult to take on the road.

Back to your age: haven’t you had any knee-replacement surgeries? You move around quite a bit onstage.
Oderus Urungus: Absolutely not. My body is in the exact same condition that it was the moment that it was born, despite all the attempts to destroy it. I regenerate much like your Wolverine, but he’s nowhere near sexy as I am. But also, something about Scumdogs is our bones are made of rubber. They’re bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun fun. Anyway, if everything was made of rubber you wouldn’t have car accidents, now would you? You’d just bounce around off each other. Nobody would get hurt.

Wow. That’s innovation. They should really get into that. To go back to an earlier question: If there is no God, is there a Satan?
Oderus Urungus: Oh yes. And we kick the shit out of him repeatedly. The whole Beyond Hell album, another masterpiece in our discography, is about GWAR’s quest through the depths of Hell and our destruction of the great Satan that lives there. Satan was no pushover. And he runs the entertainment industry.

Check out the GWAR BQ 2012 Commercial

Then, are you inherently good?
Oderus Urungus: I don’t think GWAR is good or evil. I think everyone has the capacity to commit good or evil acts. And then, at the end of the day, you add it up and see which one is bigger. With GWAR there is no end of days, just an endless procession of acts, both evil, good, and right in the middle. I don’t know if such things exist, though. Not even Oderus can tell you the truth to that one, though I will lie about it and tell you that I can.

Every time I see that big schlong of yours it’s flaccid. When do you chub up?
Oderus Urungus: Yeah, well, that’s the problem with it. I haven’t had an erection ever. One of the downsides to immortality and also having a penis as large as mine is that it is difficult to pump as much blood into it as needed, in order to maintain an erection or achieve one. The good news is that it’s pretty hard anyway. It’s kind of like always having a chubby. You know, it’s not really completely hard, but it’s not limp either. So you can pretty much wedge it in anything. It’s never failed me, though I cannot control what comes out of it. Sometimes it will be cum, sometimes it will be piss, sometimes it will be snot. I really don’t know until it explodes. Every one has a different felling. Every organism (laughs), every organism within my orgasm is a different molecule. So it’s quite a mix, but it always seems to do the trick. By making you pregnant and killing you at the same time.

When you get backed up do weird objects come out with the jizzmoglobin?
Oderus Urungus: Directors’ chairs, dump trucks, Woody Allen. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that comes out of my dick. It’s kind of like a cornucopia of colossally crummy things. Sometimes obtuse.

Tell me about the album and the songs.
Oderus Urungus: The album tells the next chapter in the story of GWAR, which is the saga of Mr. Perfect’s attempt to move through time to confront GWAR and to steal from us our mojo, if you will, the immortality we possess, which is manifested on your earth by the substance jizzmoglobin, which is basically Oderus’s load. The greatest depository of this on the planet is, of course, in my balls. And Mr. Perfect is coming through time basically to chop them off. And we’re not going to let that happen, will we?

No sir.
Oderus Urungus: The second part of the record is more, of course, as it should be. Indeed, the central theme is a glowing and honorary tribute to our departed Scumdog brother, Flattus Maximus.

This has been a wonderful interview, Oderus. Thank you.
Oderus Urungus: Very good then. You must continue to pump the Battle Maximus. The whole Maximus Clan came from across the galaxy to help create this record, so the least you humans can do is give it a listen, and once you have listened you will realize that even the most ridiculously stupid person will finally acknowledge GWAR’s mastery over all. So with that I will say hail GWAR, hail Flattus, and get ready for the Battle Maximus. Farewell.