LIVE REVIEW: GWAR AND JOB FOR A COWBOY

GWAR
When: November 11, 2009
Where: Gothic Theatre, Englewood, CO
With: Job for a Cowboy, The Red Chord

by Andrew Wilhelm (Denver)

At most metal shows, the dress code is "none more black." At GWAR shows, however, if your shirt isn't covered in blue blood and green bile, you weren't really at a GWAR show, were you? The group of intergalactic badasses, led by vocalist and Fox News' Red Eye's interplanetary correspondent Oderus Urungus, always bring a hellishly good show with them, where no human goes unsacrificed. GWAR brought their freak show to the Gothic Theatre on November 11 in support of Lust in Space, and global destruction almost materialized.

Sadly, I was not able to see Massachusetts' The Red Chord open. I was really looking forward to seeing the band that mixed death metal and hardcore before "deathcore" became a Jim Crow-esque tag amongst metalheads. Alas, the first band I saw play was one of metal's most polarizing: Arizona's Job for a Cowboy, for whom the "deathcore" tag is often used in the manner just mentioned. Their set, if you kept an eye on the crowd, was a microcosm of the attitudes towards them in the metal sphere: some fanatics, a few die-hard haters wishing GWAR would eat them, and a lot of people who didn't care. In fact, the floor was the opposite of a hurricane. There was a violent eye in the middle of stock-still masses of storm clouds, standing impatiently, waiting to swallow Oderus Urungus' bloody sperm. The most interesting aspect of Job for a Cowboy's set, however, was their conscious eschewing of their deathcore past. Most of the setlist consisted of their more straight death metal tunes, and the only pre-Genesis songs they played were "Knee Deep" and "Entombment of a Machine." Furthermore, in those two songs, vocalist Jonny Davy did not pig squeal at all, opting for more traditional death vocals instead. Pig squeals are god-awful, but was the move artistically genuine or superficial? I'm still pondering that. To Job for a Cowboy's credit, when certain members of the crowd begin yelling "GWAR! GWAR!," they took it rather well and used it to prompt the usual "give it up for (band)" shtick, a standard part of most bands' routines.

In all truth, most of the crowd was there for GWAR – and GWAR only. Before the space warriors took the stage, a "Behind the Music" parody and mini-documentary called "Behind the Murder" was shown. The film gave us a glimpse at guitarist Balsac the Jaws of Death's sensitive side and Oderus Urungus' struggles with crack cocaine. Of course, once the flick ended and GWAR appeared, the crowd went NUTS. They soaked up all of the blood and piss coming out of the cannon GWAR's slaves bring out early in the set. This intensity was consistent throughout the show, whether the band was executing "Michael Jackson" or killing a homeless alien. Whether you like the band's music or not, you have to give it up for the band keeping up with the act for more than 25 years.

Most GWAR concerts and albums are based around a story, and this time, GWAR are forced to once again combat Cardinal Syn, from the Ragnarock album. Cardinal Syn is an evil Catholic robot on a quest to homogenize the universe and turn GWAR into a Christian rock band. Complicating matters was that Oderus Urungus has lost the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu, either because he left it in the ass of a transvestite or a clerical error in Tulsa, Oklahoma (crack affects your memory, you know.) As a result, he was forced to use a human penis to perform such daily tasks as raping babies and forcing members of the audience to give fellate him. In the end, however, Cardinal Syn went down and GWAR scored themselves a boulder of crack. Overall, the story wasn't as tight-knit as the stories from the Beyond Hell and election tours ("Hilary Clinton" getting her tits ripped off is still one of my favorite GWAR moments), but it was still entertaining to see a Catholic robot get his ass kicked.

Worth 20 bucks? To you, the concert-goer, I'd say yes.