GWAR’s NEW DARK Ages album finds the infamously blood-spilling metal monsters dealing with “the specter of rogue technology” the only way they can: goofily and gorily. The album naturally has co-guitarists BalSac the Jaws of Death and Pustulus Maximus cleaving through barbarically brutal riffs, sometimes while vocalist Blothar putridly pontificates on selfmutilation (“The Cutter”). There’s also razor-sharp smartphone satire in the form of “Venom of the Platypus,” where GWAR ask a digital, duckbilled Siri stand-in named Raspy to root out stock tips, free shipping options on sword purchases — and the best place to buy phlegm. The band explains to Guitar World that this is all taking the piss out of us lowly humans for “being led astray by a little 3-inch screen in front of you.” Steel trap-mouthed Bal-Sac elaborates on our folly: “No one uses their brain anymore. Just ask your phone and it’ll tell you what you want to hear, whether it’s the truth or not.
“GWAR is embracing this new, fake intellectualism,” he continues, though somewhat self-consciously. “If every human is super-powered by this device in their pocket, then we — who are super-powered aliens from outer space — are a little threatened by that. So we’re embracing this
