GWAR devastates in glorious Palladium show
WORCESTER — The area between Major Taylor Boulevard and Main Street was alive with the sound of music on Friday night, but the demographics couldn’t have been further apart. On one hand, a small ocean of children dressed as Elsa and various other characters converged on the DCU Center with their parents and fistfuls of brightly colored LED wands for a night of Disney On Ice, their favorite cartoon characters and future memories that will surely be cherished as a result of the spectacle.
On the other, interwoven with the cavalcade of youngsters ready to get jacked up on cotton candy and snow cones were metalheads of all shapes and sizes, both young and seasoned, donning different looking costumes as they made their way up the sidewalk to a “wonderful world” of their own at The Palladium, where they were waiting to indulge in a spectacle of a slightly different ilk, led by intergalactic barbarians GWAR on their “Black Death Rager” World Tour.
The building was buzzing and comfortably filled up as showtime approached, with some fans blissfully unaware of what was to come of the night while many others, as the young punks say, understood the assignment as proven by a pit full of face paint and plain white T-shirts. To have such a historically shocking display of metal mayhem and grotesque carnage make their way to town to let loose on a Friday night, much less the Friday before Halloween, is just an overflowing fountain of good fortune and fake blood, and while it may not have made perfect sense to those unfamiliar with the bands that opened the show, it became crystal clear real fast that almost nobody can help a show pop off faster than Crobot.
With an unrelenting energy and flow out of the gate, the Pennsylvania-bred rockers made their love of music and the art of performance obvious, as they delivered startlingly fast-paced doses of both elements after frontman Brandon Yeagley hatched from an egg on stage and slid seamlessly into “consummate showman” mode. Mixing the grind of metal with some muddy, funky blues tones, and practically everything in between, the quartet didn’t pump the brakes until their half-hour set had come to a close. What they brought to the table, accented by a potent connection with their audience, was certainly a sight to be seen, and we truly hope we see them back on the Palladium stage again soon – but the spectacle was just getting started.
As the second half of the drawbridge to another dimension, the aura quite literally got a bit darker as Nekrogoblikon slithered onto the stage and struck fast with their blistering brand of metallic monstrosity, complete with the band’s handsome living logo John Goblikon, who explored the stage like a demented, alt-universe version of Ben Carr. With lightning-fast riffs and breakdowns that dragged you straight to hell, the group that would not visually exude “metal band” if not provided full context provided more than enough proof that not only were they here to melt your faces, but to also keep things fun and mischievous in their own special way.
For the duration of their set, which seemed to go by much quicker than what usually fills the second-to-last slot of the night, Nekrogoblikon straddled a fine line between putting on a killer rock show and just making a bunch of noise onstage, and within that fairly thin margin was quite honestly the perfect amount of chaos and lighthearted energy to facilitate our transportation into dangerous territory with the evening’s gruff, snarling, carnivorous overlords waiting in the wings.
There is only slight exaggeration in saying that preparation for a GWAR set is like prepping for a hurricane. Tarps on everything within spraying distance, security guards down in front stocked well with towels and ponchos, photographers wrapping their gear in saran wrap. The “before” was nearly as pulse-pounding as the onset and the aftermath, but following a snippet from the “This Is GWAR” documentary played out on the screens flanking each side of Jizmak Da Gusha’s drum kit, the band made sure there was no mistake as to what they were there to accomplish.
Equipped with a career-spanning setlist and a thirst for blood and gore, the gang of extra-terrestrial crusaders brought the pain early and often between their crushing riffs cranked out at amp-shattering volume and their entertainingly grotesque displays of artistic expression and social commentary, which only became progressively more heinous as the night wore on. Whether it was a muscular, loose representation of Vladimir Putin or other various world leaders nobody from either side of the political spectrum was spared, but rather maimed indiscriminately and subsequently used as a blood cannon to shower the crowd with in a comically gratuitous manner that had onlookers laughing as hard as it had them willingly stepping into the splash zone.
With every new journey into the many dimensions of GWAR’s 30-plus year lore as a live band, the fake blood rained down on the crowd like clockwork, as every new character that took the stage with a hose trailing up the back of them was a clear indication of what was going to come next. But while you may have thought you knew what was about to happen, the band was always at least one step ahead the entire time and continuously out-grossed and out-played the grossest display they presented up to that point. And by no means did they let up or show mercy on their theater full of sacrifices, but instead gave them all the well-known tracks and folklore they came out for.
Presentation aside, the fact of the matter is that each band brandished an insane amount of talent and musical mastery that helped bring this weird, exciting, cringeworthy, and always-evolving live art installation to an entirely new level of intrigue. And sure, GWAR succeeded in their mission to slaughter every person in their path on Friday night, but we’ll take the “L” as the human race, because underneath all the layers of sticky fake blood and, uh, other bodily fluids that soaked the crowd is a night that will stick with us longer than the copious amounts of water, food coloring and carrageenan will be adhered to every surface in our beloved local music venue.
But for what it’s worth, as a love letter to whoever has to clean the Palladium floor (and the walls, and the lights, and the monitors): may the power of Pine-Sol and the ghost of Billy Mays be with you.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: GWAR returns to Worcester for 'Black Death Rager' tour at Palladium
