While
Gwar
is really more of a sight gag, its music has always held up its end of the band's bit, riffing on
heavy metal
cliches while using those same elements to create serviceable headbanging music. Musically, the papier-mache pranksters' 1988 debut falls somewhere between
Black Sabbath
and
Anthrax
; lyrically, it's like
Ween
trapped inside the brain of a 14-year-old kid. Fart jokes, snickering song titles (the winner:
"I'm In Love (With a Dead Dog)"
), plenty of bizarre and/or gory references to sexual perversion, and references to anal caves -- it's all in a day's work for
. Standouts include
"Americanized,"
which adds a bit of
Crass
-style street
punk
into the band's sound, the joke-establishing
"Gwar Theme"
("We are
/We'll go far/We've got guitars/We'll eat your car") and
"Techno's Song,"
which introduces
Techno Destructo
, a
-hating alien who lives "way past Uranus." The death ray sound effect cutting through
"World O Filth"
's
hardcore
thrash
is also spectacular. ~ Johnny Loftus