Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

So, last night I went downtown to see which band?

GWAAAAAAAAAAAR!

And it was, er, a seminal experience, to say the least. For those of our cherished readers who operate outside of death metal’s sphere of influence, GWAR (I don’t think it’s an acronym, but it is always screamed) is noted pretty much entirely for its live performances, in which the members of the band dress as monsters, slay noted public figures in effigy, and douse the audiencewith various fluids. It is, quite frankly, pretty fuckin’ sweet.

So me and my escorts (a small Cajun and a large Cajun) get all dolled up for the show in our best duds (read: we tried to wear themost out-of-place-at-a-death-metal-show things we could, so things such as chinos, a denim onesie with attached culottes, and a pink t-shirt reading “I Love Latin Boys” were deployed) and head downtown. We stalled a lot, because frankly the opening bands on a death metal tour are probably best avoided by all but the most unwashed of heathens.

And unwashed they were. Sweet sweaty hell, have you ever been to one of these shows? I mean, I’m known far and wide for my love and acceptance of all mankind (okay, all white, Judeo-Christian mankind [okay, myself, Michael, and sometimes my mother]), but these people were, unabashedly, the most unwashed, most unwisely-tattooed, most “fragrant” group of people I’ve seen since Ani DiFranco came here on tour. I kept looking around and thinking “My goodness… how unemployable these people are!” I seriously felt like trying to writing a monograph in the style of a 17th century English explorer - “The moft Remarkable Cuftoms of the Mettal-Heads, a primitive Tribe of the Diftant Ifles, with Special Emphafis on the Adornment of the Organs of Generation.” My companion, the Small Cajun, waxed maternal: “Some of these girls would be so pretty if they’d only do something with their hair.” The Gwarites were surprisingly polite. Few experiences are more disorienting than having a 300-pound man in a Goregasm t-shirt with food in his beard courteously excuse himself as he dreadnoughts past.

So yeah. Freaks. The opening band - “Red Chord” - finished, and the roadies started installing the set and props for GWAR. The theme for the show was some sort of Ship of Doom, replete with evil infants, demon boobs, and decorative bones strewn hither and thither. Amusingly, the stagehands had set out drinks for GWAR to refresh themselves with during the show. They had chosen lemonade and fruit punch. Anyway, GWAR comes out, and in sequence they start with the blood-, bile-, heroin-, and semen-dousing of the audience. I’ll skim over the details of the majority of the show, if only because it’s hard to do justice to the concept of papal evisceration with mere words. At one point, we moved into the thick of the crowd because we were slightly out of the range of the blood spray and we wanted to truly earn our GWAR chops. Our efforts were rewarded: not only did we get a close view of Mohammed-in-effigy’s face being skinned (peace be upon him, of course,) but we found ourselves well within range of the BLOOD CANNON.

I repeat: the BLOOD CANNON.

After the show, we noted that the blood and bile (or semen, or zombie juice, or whatever) has combined to give our skins a blue-green cast… AS ON A ZOMBIE. So, as anyone would, we spent about half an hour in the garage taking zombie photographs, and then went home and scared our friend Nora to death. Two showers later, I still have blue-tinted patches on my body, and my beard may never feel really clean again.