GWARlords

After two blood-drenched decades, GWAR continues to sell out venues, slamming out thrash metal and gleefully beheading celebrity effigies. But for Oderus Urungus and his mutant band of foul-mouthed space pirates (guitarists Flattus Maximus and Balsac the Jaws of Death, bassist Beefcake the Mighty and drummer Jizmak Da Gusha), uncorking champagne still takes a back seat to sharpening the blade.

Westword: Congratulations on reaching the twenty-year mark.

Oderus Urungus: We don't consider it much to celebrate being marooned on your planet for twenty years -- dethawed from Antarctica and still unable to escape. It's more like a curse! It's incredible that you put up with twenty years of abuse from us. And that's all you'll get is abuse. Hatred. Murder. Decapitation. Disembowelment. But I must say, you humans have learned well. I was just reading in the paper about American prison guards feeding their captives to lions!

Do you get many fan letters from soldiers stationed in Iraq?

Constantly. They send us severed ears. Fingers. Photographs of themselves posed next to charred corpses of children. They're automatically enrolled in the slave club. Osama's a huge GWAR fan. He doesn't say much, 'cause he's strapped up on our torture machine, living in eternal damnation of nipple-flaying. But if he could talk, I'm sure he'd say "GWAR is okay!" We tried to give billions of quatloons of money to the Republican Party. Weapons. Military support. They rejected everything. We don't know how to figure it out, 'cause, quite frankly, we're pretty stupid. But they don't want us as an ally. They should be ashamed!

How many rabid gerbils live in your cock now?

Thirty or forty. I've been giving them tools and sticks. Tiny tools, of course. And they're building something in there -- some kind of gerbil farm. It's helping me maintain an erection. God, it's good to feel them scrabbling around in there!

Any other pre-show rituals?

I like to drive a railroad tie through my penis into a 400-pound hunk of wood and then ruin the dressing room -- kind of throw it around, like a mace. That stretches my cock out pretty good. I pour sulphuric acid in my ears to get rid of the wax and dried cum. Then I like to drink: baby blood, mucus, phlegm, bile, diarrhea, urine and lots of Jägermeister and shots of Jack Daniel's. Then smoke joints and do rails. Snort some crystal. Some crack. Shoot some heroin. Do some Xanax. Rohipinol. Viagra. Valium. Colonophen. Seroquel. By then I'm able to put my costume on. I'm so fucked up, I can't really tell if a show is happening. Then I wake up the next day in another city, and it all begins again.

GWAR's last Denver show was a sad night for metalheads, with the shooting of Dimebag Darrell.

I knew it happened as soon as it did. I'm Oderus. I felt a disturbance in the musical flow. The cosmic metal flux was wounded. So we made an announcement, then we stripped nude in tribute to our fallen metal comrade. For once, the crowd could tell GWAR was serious. I believe that was the only time. It sucked. It was a horrible experience. He's dead. And even worse, he owes me a lot of money for coke.