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The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

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GWAR descends on King tonight

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Perhaps the best showmen on the planet will come pillaging through Madison tonight at the Majestic. In a performance sure to include spraying audience members with gallons of fake blood and costumes as epic as any Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers super villain, GWAR plans to bring unholy thrash to King Street in a big way tonight.

Oderus Urungus, the horrifying creature responsible for GWAR’s vocals, talked with The Badger Herald about his history on Earth and his home planet Scumdogia as well as his righteous anger at the current lack of a GWAR action figure line.

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“People call me Oderous because I stink of urine, of fecal matter and dry-clotted brain, blood and all the other crap that gets on you when you live the life of an intergalactic gladiatorial mercenary,” Urungus said of his birth name. “I think I was from the Urungus clan. I was the smelly one.”

Although it has been a long time since Urungus set foot on his home planet Scumdogia, the musician still has fond memories of the place that informs much of his songwriting.

“[Scumdogia] is horrible for you; great for me,” Urungus said. “There are towering mountains, lakes of lava, ferocious monsters, wandering death machines, extermination camps, all-night liquor bars, strip clubs, you know, everything a good army needs. Yeah, it’s a planet of war and horror. It’s beautiful. I love it and miss it so.”

“We don’t have so much music in outer space,” he continued. “It’s more like just noises: the noise of a world being destroyed, or the noise a particular species makes when you stomp the life out of it. That’s one of reasons staying on Earth isn’t so bad. [Music] makes our time here not quite so horrible.”

Urungus and his bandmates are world-renowned for spectacular costumes that could put KISS to shame. Urungus himself wears a mask resembling something between Freddy Krueger and Darth Maul.

The monstrous Urungus is a truly horrifying sight to behold. His image has evolved significantly over GWAR’s career and continues to change.

Urungus is unsure of the future holds for his body. “How the hell would I know what I’m going to look like? If I did I would sell that information to a toy company and make lots of money to support my crack habit,” Urungus said. “It just kind of happens over night. Sometimes I’ll saw things off just to see what kind of results I get. Generally [what I cut off] comes back sort of what it looked like before but just a little bit grosser and meaner.”

“Of course I do have my armorers laboring ceaselessly. I love my armored war suit. All the members of the Urungus Tribe wear the double-spiked shoulder pads. It’s kind of our motif, if you will,” he said.

Those GWAR fans out in the world who would like to share some of the band’s glory and wear the armor will find themselves disappointed.

“Normal people would be crushed under the weight of it. The merest piece of my armor would utterly destroy a human being. It would just smash them flat. They would be smashed so flat that even the most adept Waffle House pancake flipper wouldn’t get them off of the pavement,” Urungus clarified.

Anyone who has so much as glimpsed a photo of GWAR knows the band would make for a terrific line of action figures. Although it’s anything but certain, the band members are open to having toy merchandise.

“People come and lie to us and take the ideas and put them on their own products, and it’s all a bunch of bullshit. Now we have yet to make any good ones, but I’m sure we will at some point,” Urungus said.”

“GWAR is immortal, GWAR is eternal and GWAR will continue to do whatever the fuck GWAR wants to until everything that GWAR wants is achieved,” Urungus said.

“It’s really absurd to me that GWAR does not have a major motion picture. GWAR does not have a major video game. GWAR does not have a line of dolls like all these other lame-ass bands do,” Urungus said. “But that just tells me that people are still scared of us, and that makes me very, very happy.”

GWAR is coming to Madison’s Majestic Theater tonight. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 for general admission. Opening: Municipal Waste, Ghoul and Legacy of Disorder. For more information, call the Majestic Theater at 608-255-0901.

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