GWAR “The Stoned Age” Tour with Cancer Bats & Squid Pisser

Lead Vocalist Oderus Urungus (Dave Brockie),invites us into GWAR’s personal hellscape.

The night was a savage descent into GWAR’s personal hellscape at Raleigh’s Ritz on November 10, 2024, a no-holds-barred installment of “The Stoned Age” tour that left attendees battered, bloodied, and somehow begging for more. GWAR, who has spent the last few decades transforming concerts into post-apocalyptic melees, came to town like cosmic death-dealers on a mission. Their tour, ignited in Las Vegas on October 17, sweeps across the U.S., eventually skidding to a halt in Nashville on November 20. This wasn’t a concert; it was a call to chaos—a bruising, gory satire on all things precious, sacred, or even remotely sane. For more on their tour dates and merch, check GWAR’s official site.

Squid Pisser opened with a filthy sonic battering, a firework of punk nihilism from Los Angeles. Their set was less a warm-up and more a cultural implosion: Tommy Meehan’s jagged guitar scraped against the drums of Seth Carolina like a knife on concrete. If anyone was lulled into comfort, Cancer Bats from Toronto shattered that illusion, storming in with the furious intensity that only true hardcore can deliver. Frontman Liam Cormier howled through tracks from Psychic Jailbreak, grinding out riffs that made walls sweat. Their merch was a spectacle in itself—bloody T-shirts, shredded stickers—relics of the chaos for those who dared take a piece home. For a deeper dive into their sound and upcoming events, explore Cancer Bats’ website and Squid Pisser’s site.

Then there was GWAR. The Richmond monsters, a metal circus of grotesque proportions, spilled onto the stage in a frenzy of rubberized guts, drenching the crowd with theatrical gore. Blothar the Berserker growled his way through tracks from The New Dark Ages like a post-apocalyptic shaman, flanked by the vicious riffs of BälSäc the Jaws ‘o Death and Pustulus Maximus. Their sound was a sludge of everything extreme in metal, heavy enough to break the earth in two. They didn’t just sell merch; they sold pieces of the nightmare—beer, patches, even mugs for the strong-stomached. Blood-soaked fans roared along, living out GWAR’s nightmare in flesh and fabric. This was no show. It was a resurrection, a carnival of nihilism that didn’t just leave you listening but left you lost in the madness.

Squid Pisser