Last year, alien monster metal thrashers Gwar made unexpected headlines after they received a ton of hate from right wing Twitter for performing an on-stage skit at Riot Fest, in which they brutally ‘murdered’ standing US President Donald Trump, appearing to disembowel a caricatured version of him as blood sprayed over their audience.
Videos of the performance went viral over social media, with high profile, reactionary far right account Libs Of Tiktok claiming that Gwar were “promoting violence”, even going so far as to label it “incitement”. Other Twitter users suggested that Gwar should be banned from performing, seemingly missing the memo that the band have been publicly disembowelling, beheading and generally slaying figureheads of note from across the political spectrum for decades.
“In a sense, it’s just laughable, but it was scary when we were getting death threats over social media,” says guitarist Mike Derks (AKA Balsac the Jaws of Death) in a new interview with The Guardian. “It did get me very upset when people were trying to say: ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ This is the country where we’re supposed to be able to do that! People were saying we can’t do it after we’d been doing it for 40 years.”
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Derks explains that Gwar’s gimmick initially came from place of parody, revealing that they “were poking fun at how metal acts had these traces of satanism and monsters but were just dabbling in it, using it as a bit of an image.”
He also notes that wearing a giant costume on stage comes with its own pitfalls, with disaster possible at any moment.
“Being half-blindfolded all the time is difficult,” he says. “I’m also wearing seven-inch platforms, so I’m always in danger of tripping over even the smallest thing onstage.”
Gwar are currently touring the States with Soulfly and King Parrot. Their most recent output, EP The Return of Gor Gor, was released last year.