GWAR - The New Dark Ages

Dave Brockie, the man behind GWAR's original frontman Oderus Urungus, died in 2014, and for a band built almost entirely around one grotesque, foul-mouthed alien warlord, that should have been the end of the story. Instead, GWAR pushed forward behind a new figurehead, Blothar the Berserker, and nearly a decade later The New Dark Ages, the band's fifteenth studio album, arrived as proof the post-Oderus era was more than just survival. It's one of the heaviest, most focused records GWAR has made in years, trading some of the theatrical rock flourishes of their older catalog for straight-up thrash and death metal.

The album ties into a companion graphic novel, GWAR In The Duoverse Of Absurdity, released simultaneously through Z2 Comics, in which the band battles evil doppelgangers from an alternate universe glimpsed through their own Magic Mirror. Musically, the record builds to the multi-part Death Whistle Suite, three tracks, "Temple Ascent," "Starving Gods," and "Deus Ex Monstrum," that close the record as its centerpiece. The whole thing arrived alongside a genuine surge in visibility for the band: an award-winning documentary, This Is GWAR, hitting theaters and streaming, a sold-out fall headline tour behind them, and Blothar himself moonlighting as a recurring alien correspondent on Fox News' Gutfeld.

None of that crossover attention softened the record. The New Dark Ages leans into GWAR's most extreme instincts rather than away from them, a reminder that thirty-plus years in, the band built on fake blood and worse jokes can still play genuinely vicious metal.

This 2LP pressing comes on black and gold marble vinyl, the loudest possible format for one of GWAR's heaviest records.