GWAR Unleashed: Intergalactic Mayhem Hits Good Things Festival

The story of  GWAR is carved across the history of this hopeless planet, but GWAR themselves are not of this world…Their story begins far past Uranus, in the deepest reaches of space, where the beings known as GWAR were warriors in the Scumdogs of the Universe, an elite fighting force in the army of the Master of All Reality. But GWAR proved too reckless and powerful, and after a series of tragic but hilarious blunders, they were banished to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, with orders to conquer an insignificant backwater prehistoric mudball known as the planet Earth. Once here, GWAR, the original Ancient Aliens, shaped the face of the globe, wiping out the dinosaurs, and mating with apes to create the human race. Having accidentally given rise to all human history, the Master of All Reality froze them in Antarctic ice where they could do no more harm. It was there they were discovered by a shady entrepreneur known as Sleazy P Martini, who sat the band down in front of professional wrestling, late-night horror movies, heavy metal music, and a steady diet of crack cocaine until GWAR became the cultural force they are today! Gwar return to Australia to create all sorts of mayhem at Good Things Festival. Hi Fi Way speaks to drummer Jizmak Da Gusha.

The Good Things Festival 2025 announcement has dropped and it is really cool to see Gwar make a big return back to Australia. How you do you guys feel about it?
Oh, we’re really excited about it. We left a few a few dinosaurs there. We got to come back and pick ’em up. So it was like over ten years ago since we’ve been on the continent of Australia and we’re really looking forward to coming back and obviously helping you. There seems to be a lot of trouble there with your drains and people putting weird things in them. So our work visas say we’re plumbers, so we’re going to come and fix all the drains in Australia. It’s kind of a ruse. We’ll be playing the festival, we’ll be playing the festival. Good things, of course. But you guys did a lot of damage since we haven’t been there in ten years, so we’re coming back. It must be the high protein diets or something like that here in Australia.

So what are Aussie fans in for this time around on when you guys return?
Well, this is big, this year is The Return Of Gor-Gor, which is our pet T-Rex dinosaur. The new record has been released, full multimedia, partnered with Z2 Comics, you know, full album songs, comics, it’s great. So we’re making the rounds across the globe in support of that release, which just came out.

Forty years is a staggering milestone, how does that sort milestone sit with yourself?
Well, we think Gwar will go on forever, at least a hundred years, so we’re almost halfway there right now. But yeah, it’s pretty mind blowing that you humans keep breeding so we can’t kill you off quick enough. So we have to keep going on tour so that we can keep killing more humans and you know, it’s an endless cycle. It’s a gerbil wheel of heavy metal carnage.

Sonically, how would you describe the new EP The Return of Gor-Gor?
It’s got more teeth so to speak. Like Gor-Gor does, you know, it’s really, really gritty. We have a new guitar player, Grodius Maximus. He’s young, he’s pumping a lot of good vibes into the band. We’re not such a happy band, we’re space marauders that are trying to sack everything on the planet. So he’s bringing us new energy and it’s really good. It’s fierce. It’s been a nice time getting to know Grodius. He is from the Maximus clan, which we’re very familiar with in the guitar realm. It’s just been a great project and I think it’s given Gwaru like a new edge that it hasn’t had in a minute.

How does the whole creative process work for Gwar?
It’s all collaborative, right? We get into these meetings and we put one dumb idea coupled with another dumb idea, and somehow that becomes a genius idea. That’s how it’s done. Everyone puts in any input that they want at any time and of course we’re always fighting each other on whose idea is the best. But we really do a good job of trying to put everything together in a big bouillabaisse and come out with something really inspiring, really fun and really evil,

When you say fighting, does that resort to arm wrestles, rock paper scissors or something like that?
It’s more of like brothers fighting, we’re always trying to get one up on each other, try to get our idea in, but really at the end of the day we all love each other and then everybody’s like, oh, what great ideas. We’re all super geniuses. This is amazing and we come out with some pretty good products because everybody gets to put their two cents in. It’s not just controlled by one person in the band, a singer or a guitar player or a manager or whatever. It’s a collaborative effort between all of the artists, whether they’re musicians or costume makers or graphic artists or comic book guys. It’s all one big family.

What’s the story behind the song Lot Lizard? Is that sort of based on real life events in the world of Gwar?
It’s kind of Gor-Gor story, but it’s an American tradition here I would say. There’s these places called truck stops where all the commerce and Walmart gifts and everything are delivered. At those truck stops, truckers, they spend a long time on the road driving and driving and driving. America’s quite big kind of like your country and so those truckers, male and female, they look for relief sex basically. These people are called lot lizards. They live in the truck stops and they get paid money to do sexual things to the truckers. I don’t know how much you could say in this publication, but they’re a group of hardworking people, these lot lizards and they need money and love just like any of us.

Another milestone as well with Scumdogs of the Universe turning thirty five, will there be much off that album when you come down to Australia?
Yeah, we play a good mix of Gwar’s catalog that obviously Scumdogs of the Universe being one of the classic Gwar records that launched the band in the early nineties. We definitely have something on the set list from that record pretty much on every tour. Not sure which songs yet. I know currently we’re playing a few, but we might mix it up by the time we get down there. We’ll be coming off a fall tour in the United States at that time. I’m sure that show is going to be similar and it’s going to have some different set list changes than the show we’re currently doing right now for the start of the fortieth anniversary.

Do you still love being in Gwar just as much now as you did back at the beginning?
It’s really funny. It goes in waves and decades obviously. There’s different things to like about it as it morphs and as it progresses and or as it plateaus even. There’s always something different about being in the band that you have to take on. So it makes it interesting. It’s not like I’m in a regular band and all I do is play my instrument and write songs. There’s so much stuff going on in the world of Gwar all the time, so you’re not confined to just one activity. There’s just too much to do. So everyone in Gwar has to wear multiple hats to make the machine run and that keeps it fresh. Plus you get new players here and there and that also gets exciting and gets new things going.

Musically speaking, where do you see Gwar being taken next whether that’s another EP or album, what do you think you might do next?
That’s what we’re goning to do as soon as we come sack your country, then we go right home and get to the studio and see what kind of music, art and storylines we’re going to do next. We’ve got some plans. They’re not all solidified yet, but that’s the plan is over the winter in America is to go to the woodshed and knock out a bunch of new Gwar stuff for 2026. There’s so much to do this year, it’s crazy! Australia’s the last thing before the holidays here in America, we’ve got streaming, videos coming out from the Live from the Hell Mouth, which was a show we did in Tennessee that’s coming out. We’ve got Riot Fest in Chicago. We’ve got a US tour, we’ve got an art gallery showing starting in September at Beyond the Streets Gallery in LA. There’s just so much in the Gwarr world, it’s Gwar everywhere this year for the fortieth anniversary.

Touring Australia many times over the journey, what’s the one moment that sticks out for you?
Well, we did play Soundwave many years ago when it was around, and that was quite interesting because at the time we came and I don’t know if you have a prime Minister or a president, was it Abbott? What was his name? [Yeah, prime Minister Abbott]. We had managed to kidnap him and at the Soundwave Festival we had obviously dispatched of him, decapitated him and that was a big thrill for the Australians. You guys loved it. I think we got in the front of your national newspaper, the front cover for that. So that was a highlight just doing something that you guys really enjoy. Come out and see it. It will be amazing. If you haven’t seen Gwar before, you’ll be forever changed. For good or for worse is up to you. But you’ll be forever changed after you come see us.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Gwar at Good Things Festival on the following dates, tickets HERE…