GWAR
Cain’s Ballroom
April 9, 2026
The full spectrum of humanity's impulses throbbed like a fresh wound last week. Our proclivity towards sacred aspirations took flight in the diverse crew of Artemis II, which captured our fragility and fortune in the vastness of the universe while affirming that we are a cooperative species whose long arc bends towards progress. Down in this toilet earth, a madman brandished the world's second largest nuclear arsenal like a toddler with scissors as he threatened “a whole civilization” with destruction. Those connecting the dots worried that the beautiful crew of Artemis might witness the destruction of our own pale blue dot from their orbit of the moon.
But the Artemis crew came home, humanity is obviously still here, and the only people who would’ve been fine with the nuclear option are apocalyptic accelerationists—or maybe The Scumdogs of the Universe, GWAR.
Well, not the members of GWAR, who are very nice artists from Richmond, Virginia, but their stage personas. There is sacred lore about exactly who, what, and why GWAR are what they are, but they were basically the most heinous aliens in a band of heinous aliens who were banished to “the most insignificant dirtball planet” (Earth) for being too heinous. They lay frozen under the ice in Antarctica until the ‘80s, when an overuse of hairspray ripped a hole in the ozone and melted their tomb, unleashing their menagerie of malevolence upon the planet.
The profane explanation is they are a shock-rock group of humans in giant monster costumes who kill effigies of people on stage and spray mock versions of every bodily fluid imaginable upon their fans.
GWAR at Cain's | photos by Beckie Richmond
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen GWAR, but my first show was on their Mock The Vote 2004 tour, where they tore apart effigies of George W. Bush and John Kerry and geysered the blood of both onto me and my friends. At a show not long after in the former Brady Village (that big field next to Inner Circle Vodka Bar), frontman Oderus Urungus (the late Dave Brockie) broke murder-loving character and told the crowd there were mass graves of Black people all around Tulsa, and “if you are proud of that, you are a piece of shit.” This was before the 1921 Race Massacre was taught in schools. I quite literally learned of our city’s darkest chapter from a man in a space viking outfit.
Last Thursday’s show at Cain’s was a special one in my history with this band: it was the first GWAR show for my partner and multiple other friends, whom I instructed to wear white shirts they didn’t care about. I missed Australian grindcore opener King Parrot (not to be confused with death metal band Hatebeak, whose singer was actually a parrot) but caught some of Soulfly’s slammy nu-metal. If non-GWAR aliens ever pull up to Earth and ask what nu-metal sounds like, show them “jumpdafuckup” for the most crystallized specimen in the genre.
GWAR finally took stage to anticipatory cheers from the crowd and I rushed my partner up front just in time for her to receive her first GWAR baptism in the form of a prosthetic priest’s ass blood. The crew steamrolled through their chaotic brand of metallic punk, dropping satires of the Epstein Files between tunes. GWAR’s members undoubtedly possess chops, able to shred and blast while wearing giant and ridiculous foam rubber grotesqueries with limited sight lines to hit stage marks. But musically … well, you don’t really go to a GWAR show for the music. Nevertheless, GWAR’s cover of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club”—made famous by an appearance on the Onion A.V. Club’s “A.V. Undercover,” its virality undoubtedly owed to the outlandish juxtaposition between their appearance and their song choice—brought the house down before a final blood fountain to the band’s original fan favorite, “Sick of You.”
GWAR’s stage show at Cain’s was less politically charged than others I remember, save for the Epstein nods, the maiming of an ICE agent, and a Kristi Noem with giant fake breasts getting gutted. (I thought the knockers were a nod to the outing of her husband as a big tiddie bimbo, but concert reviews from before Bryon Noem’s reveal indicate that her costume hit the road well-endowed.)
And of course, there was Trump. GWAR’s theatrical murder of politicians has been nonpartisan since their inception, and consistent in not missing a single president. But in a turn of events that anyone with an above-10 IQ could’ve predicted, the “free speech absolutists” of MAGA have lately been sending the Scumdogs death threats over them eviscerating Dear Leader in effigy.
But who cares? Trump’s Iran stunt (and recent posting of himself as AI Jesus) has further split MAGA; the telltale signs of a cult’s death rattle are upon us. The packed and blood-spattered Cain’s crowd showed that one cult will prevail, merging the raptures of rock with the brutality of reality: Make America GWAR Again.
