http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/m...le/gwar-bloody-pit-of-horror-114155

Motorhead meets punk in Gwar's lean & mean new release.
BY IANN ROBINSON
OCT 12, 2010




GWAR

BLOODY PIT OF HORROR

METALBLADE RECORDS

There are few things in this life you can count on. Death, taxes, the fact that you won’t go home with the hot waitress and Gwar coming out with a solid heavy metal record. For a band that has been kicking around twenty years or more, Gwar consistently release heavy, thrash-oriented metal, with a crisp sense of humor laying just beneath the surface.

Known for ultra-violent live shows, and comic book horror metal, Gwar is mostly seen as being a good time. However, sitting just underneath that, is a band forcing the metal genre to confront how silly it is. With their new album Bloody Pit Of Horror, Gwar once again poke fun at their beloved genre with great style.

Going for power over bloat, Gwar have sliced down their songs down to short bursts of Motorhead-meets-punk, and it works incredibly well. One of the hardest things to deal with in metal is how over-blown the songs can become when artist egos get out of control. Gwar have always been about slapping the ego out of metal, and Bloody Pit Of Horror does it in a lean, economical, way.

The album opens with “Zombies, March”, a galloping, thrash metal giant that grabs you and forces you to either ride a horse into battle, or headbang until your neck snaps. It’s classic Gwar, that straight-ahead formula that’s kept them going for so long. “Comes The Carnivore” has forty five seconds of what sounds like evil taking a stroll before moving into a plodding, old school, slow metal jam.

For most Gwar is a shtick. They’re Kiss on acid with homicidal tendencies. To me Gwar are a great example of what metal has lost. When thrash came out the music was taken seriously but the whole scene had a sense of fun to it, a larger then life vibe, which is what made it so enjoyable. Over the last twenty years metal has turned into this overly serious, windbag of a scene, filled with pretentious clowns trying to appear more important then they are.

Gwar doesn’t do that, they just write great metal songs and give people a kick ass live show. Bloody Pit Of Horror is full of picture perfect thrash metal tunes. “Storm Is Coming” has the chorus the crowd can sing along with; “Beat You To Death” is the mosh pit call to arms. Even though I find mosh pits now to be incredibly cliché and silly, I might even start dancing when Gwar kicks into “Beat You To Death”. Then there’s “Hail, Genocide”, which combines a riff brushing very close to a heavy funk, with an arena metal army chant.

Bloody Pit Of Horror isn’t a particularly innovative record but that works in Gwar’s favor. At this point metal needs a seventies punk revolution to burn it’s bloated ass to the ground and rebuild. Newer bands like Bonded By Blood and Municipal Waste are leading that charge and they owe a large debt to Gwar for holding it down like this over the years.

Don’t worry; the fun is still there, the horror, the funny lyrics and song titles (“Tick Tits” anyone?) but now it seems to mean more. The younger bands coming up, the ones who will be the punk movement of metal can use Gwar and Bloody Pit Of Horror as a blueprint to fuel the revolution. In the meantime Gwar will keep holding it down with a healthy dose of thrash, solos, blood, guts, semen and spiked armor.

ALL HAIL!!

CRAVEONLINE RATING 8 OUT OF 10

Disappointing lack of Crimson Executioner content

This album rules.

Fuck you and in b4 Beard Lice Jim troll.