Gwar -- America Must Be Destroyed

(Metal Blade 26807)

I can swallow the concept of GWAR a lot easier knowing it’s a joke -- a subtle one, imagine that -- on 15-year-olds of all ages who digest Kerrang and other heavy metal magazines whole and unquestioningly.

Taking cues from the legendary GWAR stage show, this third release is more body fluid, phallic symbolism and exploding metal speed-spurt. Their dinosaur-rock anthem outpunks Blue Oyster Cult into the old folks home, their "road song" will offend feminists everywhere, and their cocktail jazz parody about sucking out the brains of little kids namedrops Fatty Arbuckle -- (has someone been reading Hollywood Babylon in the bathroom again?) -- spotlighting a DIFFERENT KIND of post-modern rock rebellion; one fostered on acute sarcasm rather than poseur cool.

If that wasn’t enough, the band -- using pseudonyms like Jizmack the Crusher, the Sexecutioner and Slymenstra Hyman, wearing costumes straight out of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards-- thank Richard Nixon and Ollie North in the credits, and flout their parental advisory sticker like it was the art director’s idea the whole time. Of course, GWAR is savvy enough to know that the PMRC are the best friends an emerging, teen-oriented rock band could have. . . especially a "band" who have their tongues super-glued to their cheeks.

After their now-notorious 1990 arrest in North Carolina on obscenity charges, the Richmond-based GWAR have invented a grandma character here that seeks to stamp out the band’s cartoon decadence through diabolical government legislation: "GWAR, you’re the worst / I’ll put an end to you / You’re even grosser than 2 Live Crew / My grandson the superhero just got back / From the war in Iraq."

Har Har Snort! Yeah, America Must be Destroyed is pretty funny. . . and the best recording yet from Windmark Studios in Virginia Beach. The metallic crunch just buries you in Digital overkill, especially on cuts like the thrusting "Gilded Lily" and the Black Sabbath-like "Poor Ole Tom." No moussed-hair metal here. GWAR’s music may indeed be an afterthought after the costumes and the concepts, but it’s at least a bonecrushingly-loud afterthought. Future parodists note.

. . . and if GWAR’s target demographic doesn’t get the "joke" any quicker than their parents, well. . . that’s the delicious part of this animated mind control; if your average junior high schooler chooses to follow the skewed dogma of a heavy metal Devo, led by sardonic VCU art students who leave no envelope unpushed, I’m sure as hell not going down to the food court to stop him. In the end, if the choice is between Jizmack the Crusher and Slash of Guns ‘n’ Roses, I’m hoping today’s youth have the good sense to choose the cartoon that knows what it is.

--- Don Harrison / Catharsis #25 -- May. 1992