Opening Bands: Mensrea, JasMoustacheEddis
Date: May 28th 2008

Gwar always puts on an excellent and entertaining show! The band has been on a mini-tour this spring, and they stopped at one of their frequent stops, at the Chance in Poughkeepsie NY. It’s been about 2 or 3 years since I last saw the band play, and each time I see them it’s been a lot of fun.

For a Chance show, the doors opened up early at 6:30pm and a line was already there when I arrived. I guess everyone wanted to get up front and get bloody. After getting inside, I wanted to go upstairs but the staff didn’t open up the balcony yet. So I got my usual spot (stage left, by the stairs) and waited for the opening band to come on. They were a local band (I think?) called JasMoustacheEddis and they had a metal/hardcore sound. They weren’t bad, and I actually dug a few of their songs. During their set, the guitar player broke one of his strings and they didn’t know what to do. At first they were scrambling around, but people just kept telling them to play on and they did. It wasn’t really noticeable but the other guitar player eventually fixed his string. Besides that little mishap, I thought the band fair well with the crowd.

On a side note, what’s with The Chance and kicking people out for hardcore dancing? At least that’s what it looked like to me. I guess if people swung their arms on people not in the pit, they’d get throw out of the venue. Has the Chance gone soft or something? I don’t know, I thought it was a bit extreme to kick people out just for doing that.

The next band was Mensrea, featuring members of Gwar. Corey Smoot (Flattus Maximus) and Nate Krishna (SlaveDogg) play guitar in Mensrea but also for Gwar. I believe Nate is a guitar tech or a slave for Gwar? I never heard of Mensrea before but I liked their sound a lot. It was a cross between metal and hardcore. It’s been ages since I went to a metal show so it was a nice change up from my usual shows. I have no idea what songs they played but they played for about a half hour or so. For some songs, they managed to get some dancing going on but the crowd seemed to be just in a pushy mood for Mensrea. After their set, people waited for about 45 minutes for Gwar to hit the stage. They didn’t hit the stage until 9:20pm; I was hoping they would have come on earlier since there was an earlier door time.

The curtains came up and George W Bush was there to greet the crowd. He was commenting about how awesome he was and about the gas prices. Of course Oderus and Gwar took care of that idiot and chopped off his head. My girlfriend was a Gwar virgin so she didn’t really know what to expect from this show. She really loved when Bush got his head chopped off though. I’m bad when it comes to setlists and I don’t know all the songs the band played so I’ll try my best to recount what they played. I believe they opened up with “War Is All We Know” or was it “The Tormentor?” Either way, that song sounded awesome.

During the band’s set, I had the pleasure of shooting the entire thing and couldn’t have been happier. I used to watch the shows from the Chance downstairs, back by the bar but love getting a spot up on the balcony these days. I’ve always wanted to shoot a Gwar show so I finally got the chance and happy with my photos. It was really hard to shoot these guys because of the intense backlighting, smoke and other elements. Oderus was the hardest one to shoot photos of because the other members had the spotlights on them a lot more. Not sure if that was deliberate or not.

Out of the all the albums, songs off of Beyond Hell were played the most. That’s Gwar’s latest album so it makes sense, plus it’s sort of a concept album so you kind of have to play most of those songs together. I believe they didn’t play anything off America Must Be Destroyed and I’m kind of disappointed with that because it’s my favorite album. They did play a few off Scumdogs of the Universe including “King Queen” and in the encore, “Sick of You.” I was really happy to hear “Sick of You” because its one of my favorite Gwar songs, and one of the songs that got me into the band. I think “Maggots” was the first Gwar song I heard.

There were a lot of interesting characters that Gwar killed that night like Jilter (Hilter/Jesus), Nazi Demonic Pope, some corrupt policeman, some character with long arms and some big Jewish monster who I think is called Jewcifer. I think something went wrong during the Jewcifer scene because the character didn’t bled on anyone. I think Oderus chopped off his hand the wrong way and the tubing got messed up. So the character just walked back behind the wall thing.

Other tracks that Gwar played that night include “Saddam A Go Go,” “Penguin Attack,” “Bring Back the Bomb,” “Krosstika” and “Muderus Muse.” At least I think those were the songs, I was too busy taking pictures to remember every song. It was hard to hear Oderus sing at times, I think the vocals were too loud or the guitars were making him sound muffled to me. Or perhaps I’m just losing my hearing. But like I said before, they played “Sick of You” during the encore and sadly, that was the only song that we got. I was hoping for some more songs but if I was playing in those costumes that long, I’d want to get the hell out of them. All in all, it was another great Gwar show that was entertaining but wish they played at least one song off America Must Be Destroyed. Maybe next time?

Thanks to Dave, Jeremy and Jack for the passes