GWAR - "WE KILL EVERYTHING" (METAL BLADE)
GWAR - "WE KILL EVERYTHING" (METAL BLADE)
Gwar have released their seventh album, called "We Kill Everything". Quite a few fans reckoned the predecessor, "Carnival of Chaos", was a bit wimpy and not quite as shocking as any of the earlier Gwar songs. I guess the band took that criticism seriously, at least if we are to judge the content by song titles such as "Baby Raper", "Fishfuck", "Penile Drip" and "Fuckin' an Animal". Gwar seem to effortlessly and unscrupulously seek out taboo subjects to cover in their songs. Usually they try to get some halfway intelligent ideas across, but with "We Kill Everything" I get the idea they're just trying to sing filth for filth's sake.
Musically, is a lot like "Carnival of Chaos". There are a couple of oddball songs, there's Dave "Oderus" Brockie's instantly recognisable vocal style, and of course there's the slightly to pretty much shocking lyrical content. Again there's room for Slymenstra to excel in "My Girly Ways", and this time a new Scumdog members is introduced in the form of Scruda Moon (nice name :-), who sings on several songs starting with "Tune from Da Moon". Highlights of the album are the cynical "The Performer", the instrumental "A Short History of the End of the World (Part VII (The Final Chapter (abbr.)))" and the title song. It looks, however, like Gwar's videos are getting more interesting than the CDs because the visuals are more entertaining than the music. The days of "Scumdogs of the Universe" and "America Must be Destroyed" lived again briefly with "Ragnarok", as far as I'm concerned, but the albums after that seem to have less of the magic ingredient that makes me really dig them.
Still, a rather cool album for those with open minds and a desire to be entertained.
RK
Written March 1999