Courtesy Albert Licano
Audio By Carbonatix
The Dwarves still don’t give a fuck about anybody but themselves.
The provocative Chicago punk legends are no strangers to confrontation, and after 40-plus years, they embrace the shocked and disgusted reactions that come with such an off-color cult career.
For the uninitiated, The Dwarves built a weirdo empire on blood, guts and pussy — and every non-PC topic in between — well before cancel culture crept into the zeitgeist, and at this point with nearly twenty records on the resume, they’re impervious to it.
“You’d think so,” says in-your-face frontman Blag Dahlia. “Though I’m sure if we ever sold any records, we would probably then be canceled all over again. People still have their protests about this and that.”
Courtesy KAZ
The group is prepping to release its 17th album, “Jenkem” (June 5 via DIY Dwarves label Greedy Records), and we can tell you that there is no holding back. The band — Dahlia, guitarists HeWhoCannotBeNamed and The Fresh Prince of Darkness, bassist Rex Everything, drummer Snupac — is again out for blood, as the 14 tracks take on some contemporary issues in trademark Dwarves fashion.
On “Hey Melania,” Dahlia extends his sexual support to the first lady, in case she needs some love between the sheets.
“It’s funny, the Dwarves have never been a political band, per se, so we had to write it from our perspective, which would be, like, Melania, as horrible as she might be, is still pretty hot,” he explains. “I just offered, ‘I know you’re not getting what you need, and I’m here.’ It’s like offering my services. Maybe when it gets wider release, I’ll be hearing from her, or her attorneys.”
Then there’s opener “Confused,” a satirical take on the manosphere’s incessant outrage of the LGBTQ community.
“That whole movement is very amusing to me. It’s hard to do this kind of thing and then avoid that whole manosphere thing,” Dahlia, 60, says. “It used to be just being outrageous was more in the context of, ‘Hey, we’re all part of this rock and roll scene, and we’re all cool about shit. Listen to us get outrageous.’
“Now it’s in this context of us vs. them. It’s very hard to comment on anything without seeming like you’re on that team. And we’re not,” he continues. “It’s more like, ‘How can we still say what we want and talk about the kinds of crazy stuff that’s actually in our minds?’”
Seriously, what do you expect from a band that named its latest album after huffing human waste?
“It’s this really cheap inhalant where people in, like, third-world countries will fill a gallon jug with their own shit and snort the methane of it,” Dahlia explains with a laugh.
He’s quick to add that no member of the Dwarves was under the influence of jenkem while writing and recording “Jenkem:” “We were just fascinated by the concept. It was like Huey Lewis; somebody found a new drug. Snupac discovered this concept. He’s in touch with the modern ways of getting high.”
The Dwarves are taking the shit show on the road, landing in Denver at the Oriental on Saturday, May 23, with OG peers Screeching Weasel and Motor City surf-rockers Hayley & The Crushers.
Since the beginning in the mid-80s, the band has a unique knack for defying any definitive classification. Aside from the outright offensive lyrics, the Dwarves play it all, from jangly garage rock to hardcore punk to crossover. There’s a reason they’ve outlasted, and thrived, through the grunge and pop-punk eras, even playing with such headliners as Nirvana, Green Day and The Offspring over the years, and have become a part of pop-culture. The song “Motherfucker” was used in the 2000 Jim Carrey comedy “Me, Myself & Irene,” and that was after Dahlia lent his voice to the original ” SpongeBob SquarePants” song, “Doing The Sponge” (yeah, that show was more punk-rock than you thought).
“Dwarves exist in this side world that has always just been our own world. We were never really identified with anything. We kind of just touched on everything,” Dahlia says. “It was very interesting to be in this band and just always be outside of it and beyond it, and we just make the kind of records we make.”
It’s certainly freeing, he shares, but if you’re just discovering the Dwarves, don’t read, or listen, too much into it.
“It’s people taking things very literally that weren’t meant to be taken literally. Punk was meant to be showing you the outer limits of what you can think or talk about. When everything gets flattened into this, ‘So are you saying you approve of murder? Or rape? Or child molestation?’ No, these are just things that ricochet around your head,” Dahlia explains. “Then the question is, ‘Are you going to censor yourself before you even started? Or are you going to be willing to write about things that might upset people?’ We fall into the latter camp. We will write things that upset people.
“So come in your most attractive outfit and find someone to have sex with,” Dahlia concludes. “Let the Dwarves music carry you along in a decadent, debauched sea of sex, drugs and death.”
The Dwarves, with Screeching Weasel and Hayley & The Crushers, 7 p.m. Saturday, May 23, The Oriental Theater, 4335 West 44th Ave. Tickets are $35.
