The Return of Gor Gor

For those unfamiliar with GWAR’s intergalactic heavy metal sci-fi lore, leader Blóthar the Berserker is more than happy to explain the title of the band’s 40th anniversary release, a part-studio, part-live conceptual extravaganza that strives to capture the GWAR experience. “Gor Gor was a pet T. rex we birthed by injecting crack cocaine into a dinosaur egg that we discovered,” he tells Apple Music. “Gor Gor eventually would turn against us and rage and destroy cities. We didn’t mind the destruction so much, but he was very aggressive towards us. So we killed him.” As the title implies, Gor Gor is back. But it’s not necessarily the same Gor Gor that was birthed on GWAR’s 1988 debut, *Hell-O*. “We’ve had all kinds of Gor Gors,” Blóthar clarifies. “This particular Gor Gor is a female, but her pronoun is ‘we.’ And they want revenge on us for being shitty.” Moral of the story? “They really should have breeding restrictions against Tyrannosaurus rexes,” Blóthar says. Below, he comments on each track. **“The Great Circus Train Disaster”** “This song was inspired by a trip that some of our members took to VAMPA, the vampire museum in Pennsylvania. One of the things they saw there was a charred Ouija board that had been involved in a circus train crash during World War I. Within the context of GWAR, this is the story of a group of circus freaks who perform a séance and summon Gor Gor’s mother during the process of birth. Then she’s struck by a train, and all kinds of bad things happen: She dies, and most of the circus people die. Little baby Gor Gor is left with a few remaining survivors of the circus freak show.” **“Lot Lizard”** “Gor Gor flees the circus and winds up turning tricks. They’ve got to make a living, so they’re out there sucking dick at a truck stop. This song also gives us a chance to celebrate lot lizards. We’re not picking on them—it’s not like those people need to be taken down a peg or two. The song does kind of celebrate choice as an aspect of sex work. Gor Gor is saying, ‘Look, I don’t need you preaching to me or trying to change me. This is what I want to be. Maybe I need help, but I don’t need your condescension.’ Also, sucking dick isn’t a vocation you want to have as a Tyrannosaurus because you don’t get a lot of repeat customers.” **“Tyrant King”** “Gor Gor has been around as long as the band. In the very earliest photos of GWAR, you can see our first pet dino Gor Gor—a guy on two five-gallon buckets wearing a bunch of camouflage cloth with a big papier-mâché GWAR head. He was in ‘Aeiou’ on the first album, and then we told his story on *America Must Be Destroyed* a few years later. This new song is the most modern telling, but it takes a similar viewpoint as the original, which is telling the story of a dinosaur that destroys American cities, wreaks havoc and wreaks revenge on GWAR.” **“Crack in the Egg” (Live)** “This song fits our narrative because ‘Crack in the Egg’ is essentially the birth of Gor Gor’s mother, the one that gets hit by the train. It’s also on *America Must Be Destroyed*. So, it recounts the story of how we shot the dinosaur egg full of crack. It’s one of our early attempts at a rock opera, where we had different characters saying stuff in the lyrics. It’s also just a good fucking song. It’s got a great riff written by the original Flattus Maximus, whose human slave was Dewey Rowell.” **“The Founding Fathers” (Live)** “In this song, we’re trying to use a time machine to bring back one of the founding fathers of the United States, but what we wind up doing is bringing back a hideous amalgamation of all the founding fathers stuck together into a giant creature that we fight and kill. That’s a big improv thing most nights on tour. And the most fun part of GWAR is the stuff that’s different every night.” **“America Must Be Destroyed” (Live)** “It’s the most expensive song we ever did. That’s because we had this guy in the band, Dave Musel, who did samples. He was awesome. He found all of these original sounds and samples, and he was very musical in the way he put them together. He wrote this instrumental and put a bunch of samples on it. But he used a lot of samples from The Last Poets, so we ended up having to pay The Last Poets a significant amount of money to use those samples. It was maybe not worth it, but we did get a really good GWAR song out of it that I think speaks to the creativity and musicality of the band.” **“Fishfuck” (Live)** “This is just a great and hilarious song. \[Departed GWAR founder and mastermind\] Dave Brockie hummed the bassline, and we wrote the song around that. We used to do stuff like that all the time. The song just makes me laugh every time. That line, ‘Gonna take a moa-moa and swim it up your butt’… I remember having to look that up, like, what the fuck is a moa-moa? It’s one of those giant fish that looks dead. But it’s a great punk rock ditty, man. It sounds like if The Misfits had intellectual disabilities.”

Intergalactic shock rockers GWAR deliver multimedia release to celebrate milestone – shame there’s not more new material, though