Via the band’s MySpace page:
“Hello, all! We’re almost out of hiding … and the new album is practically finished! Just have to do the final mixing, mastering, all the fun stuff, and we’re getting ready to hit the road a bit! As we’re putting some tentative dates together, let us know if there’s anything local to you that you’d like to see us play. We can’t wait to be on tour again and we definitely can’t wait to have this new album released. So, stay tuned … we’ll be out there shortly. Thanks for all the unending support! Keep in touch … . -CABIN-”

GWAR is a band in the same way that John Wayne Gacy was a party clown. They have their ulterior motives, one of which is the no-holds-barred satire of their stage show. It is something that is actually bawdy, obscene and in your face, not some elevated humor trying to hearken back to Swift. As a stage show, they work as a real mash up of popular culture - often bringing figures from news headlines up on stage a little too soon (I seem to remember a lot of boos and what-the-hells when they brought an effigy of the Virginia Tech shooter onto the stage at Sounds of the Underground). It is exactly this kind of real uncomfortably that is created — beyond all taste and judgment, that keeps this band’s political side razor sharp, and completely relevant. They act as a kind of pop-culture pagan bloodletting ritual for their audience, killing media figures for us in the only form we’ve ever known them (effigy), and mocking us for wanting it. It’s been 25 years of excuses to come back to earth so that they can watch humans purchase and enjoy their own mocking and slaughter. We pay for the degradation of the truth that is inherent in their humor and they really seem to get off on this. Too bad we do too.

I spoke with Oderus Urungus, lead singer and founding member of GWAR via telephone. They play Wednesday with Job for a Cowboy, The Red Chord, Stonecutters, The Revenants, Antikythera, and The Burial at Expo Five (2900 S. Seventh St. 637-5218). Tickets are $20.

LEO: Your music was more … eclectic for a while. Why on this new album have you settled back into a more straightforward metal sound?

Oderus Urungus: Because we decided to. We were playing all this ridiculous stuff for years, but it was just because we had to go through all the different styles the human race had come up with while we’d been sleeping to kind of get back up to speed. We had to process every form of music the humans had come up with, everything from Paraguayan ditch digging music to new-wave Swedish pop that they grow cheese cultures with. After that, we decided that we didn’t like any of that shit and we had to go back to what we loved the best, and what we love best is fucking metal and that’s what works best for GWAR, and that’s the way we’ve been ever since.

LEO: I hear that you’re the only openly extra terrestrial band on the planet. Any other aliens you’d like to out?

OU: The only one I could would be Michael Jackson but you know, he died, but it turns out he didn’t after all. He faked his death and left the planet returning to his cousins in the cosmos. But we’ve brought Michael back for one big final show here in Louisville coming up. So if you all want one last chance to see the living legend that is Michael Jackson moonwalking with Oderus, this is the time.

LEO: How did you get a spot on Fox News’s Red Eye, and what does that say about the network?

OU: I have no idea how the fuck I ended up on Fox News, all I know is that its happened repeatedly now and… (trails off, talks to people around him) Sorry, woah I’m back, a group of killer penguins just attacked the lounge. Anyway, I have no idea how I got that gig. I was at Fangoria, in New York city and they called me up and said “Hey Oderus, you want to do this show? You in New York?” And I was like “Yeah I’m in New York right now god damnit!” So I walked straight over to Rockefeller center, met Bill Oreilly, went into Fox news and knocked the ball out of the fucking park! And now, eight episodes later, I’m their interplanetary correspondent. Now what does that say about Fox? Well, this is the company that gave us The Simpsons, so I don’t really think it’s that far fetched. Just because Fox is a conservative news channel doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. They probably did that mostly because Bush was in office for eight years. Now that we’ve got Obama, I think that them getting Oderus as one of their commentators is their first step to a more liberal platform.

LEO: What’s the shittiest show you ever played?

OU: I don’t know, they’re all so much fun, I don’t think we’ve ever played a shitty show. Everything GWAR’s ever done is perfect, isn’t it? Well actually, last time we played in Louisville, the video projector was pointed at the wall opposite from where the band was playing forcing everyone to look back and forth repeatedly. That was pretty difficult. But otherwise, I don’t think we’ve ever had shitty exactly, although I’ve certainly shit myself on stage.

LEO: The new album is called Lust In Space. What about space sex is different from terrestrial sex?

OU: It’s like being on nitrous oxide and Percocets and Oxycontin and smoking crack while having sex and floating in outer space. You don’t even need to do all that stuff to get the effect, but if you do anyway you’ll just be twice as high.

LEO: On the new album, in the song “parting shot,” you claim that “judges are more fun on fire.” What was so fun about judges in the first place?

OU: Well, I guess that isn’t the best way of putting it. They’re really not very much fun at all, and I’m kind of making a little joke there, but certainly, if you’re getting scentenced, and the judge is throwing you in jail and suddenly he bursts into flames, then…that’s hilarious. And It’s certainly more fun than going to jail.

LEO: Have you been worried about the swine flu at all on tour?

OU: No. Well really, we’re worried that not enough people are going to get it. We are distributing swine flu at every show, as well as aids and bubonic plague. So no, we’re not worried about it, in fact we are quite excited.

LEO: So would that be GWAR’s own kind of health care plan?

OU: Yes. The sick get sick, and then they die, leaving more room for the strong. This is GWAR health care.

LEO: Would you call Gwar a political band?

OU: No, I would call it anti-political, in that we like to take people that are involved in politics, crucify them, and draw up totally confusing legal documents on their butt skin.

LEO: This is going to be in a magazine called “Leo.” What do you think LEO stands for?

OU: Lithgow Emulates Orangutans. —Pawl Schwartz

Burn To Shine celebrates the release of its new album, Signs of What’s To Come, with a show Nov. 14 at Phoenix Hill Tavern. The band spent five weeks in California making it with producer Toby Wright (Cheap Trick, Primus). Jonathan “Stre” Streander and Chase Dabney join us in the LEO offices.

Listen: Burn To Shine

Yim Yames. Photos: Frankie Steele (Olive Creative)

Conor Oberst

Mike Mogis

M. Ward

Will Johnson

I’m not a Conor Oberst fan. He can write, no question, but over the course of a few records, his developed vocabulary transforms into a beast he can’t quite control, squeezing out feeling and tone. I own “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” and “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning,” have heard “Lifted” and “Cassadaga,” his Mystic Valley Band collaboration. Maybe I’m biased against a writer who sings with such suffering so often that I wonder if he’s putting me on, but I don’t know him personally, only through his artwork.

Monsters of Folk’s Halloween blowout was the first time Oberst got it right as far as I’m concerned. Functioning within a group, Oberst’s verge-of-dementia vocals mesh well with M. Ward, My Morning Jacket’s Yim Yames and the quartet’s arguable ringmaster and Oberst’s essential Bright Eyes collaborator, Mike Mogis. It’s in these smaller doses — a chorus here, a harmony there, a verse occasionally — that Oberst stays effective. Early in the night, Conor and Mogis stepped out on a blackened stage for Bright Eyes moment that rung powerfully, not a moment of dread to be found.

Tom Waits, M. Ward is stepping into your smoke. Louisville shut up long enough to be bewitched by Ward’s tuneful rasp and disarming stage presence, especially in light of a prolonged tuning fight with his guitar. “I don’t get out here much,” he said, “so I wanna make sure this guitar sounds just right for you all.” Cue rabid cheers. Ward’s Post War and Hold Time LPs prove singer-songwriters.

Mogis was pure utilitarian: pedal steel, guitar, etc., and shredding on a mandolin. Now working with Rachel Yamagata. Watch out.

Yames wasted no time in giving the hometown what it wanted, peeling off renditions of MMJ’s “Golden,” and bone-chilling renditions of “Smokin’ From Shootin’,” and “Bermuda Highway” with MOF drummer/Centro-matic’s Will Johnson on acoustic guitar and backing vox.—MH

The Teeth
w/ Straight A’s
“Clatter & Jive” 7-inch release
Nov. 14
The Cathouse
747 S. Preston St.
$5

The 7-inch, due out on Noise Pollution, is limited to 200 copies, and was recorded on eight-track at The now-defunct Pour Haus in Germantown. Each person will receive a copy with paid admission.

Tracklist:
The Generator
Pig Foods
Huevos Cubanos

Face A Frowning World: An E.C. Ball Memorial Album
Produced by Nathan Salsburg
Arrives Dec. 8

Tracklisting and credits:

Photo by Michael Lavine

At least, we’re pretty sure it is. Walford, whom standard issue indie rock fans know as the drummer from Slint, appears on The Breeders album Pod under a different name. In his new book, Grunge, photographer Michael Lavine captures moments from the punk scene of Seattle in the 1980s, as well as pics from sessions with Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, including a previously unreleased outtake of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain from a 1992 Sassy magazine photo shoot.