Pop Music : Gothic Spectacle From Novelty Punks

GWAR, a bunch of Virginia art students posing as Antarctic death gods, are the hippest and best novelty punk band in a world clotted with Mojos and Dead Milkmen, and they’re certifiably huge: In just 18 months, the band has gone from playing the teensy Gaslight to headlining the packed Hollywood Palladium on Friday.

The music might be generic, grinding speedcore that sounds like the Dead Kennedys on a bad night, but that’s not the point: GWAR’s garish Gothic spectacle is sometimes pretty spectacular. And potentially offensive, if you can’t take a joke. . . .

Band members wear outsize gladiator costumes and makeup that makes them look like decomposing tortoises. Oversize body parts spurt torrents of “blood” and “urine” that arc far into the audience. Uncle Sam has his entrails pulled out through his throat. A woman is run through a meat grinder; a skinhead is beheaded, coating the stage with gore. As a grand finale Friday, GWAR duked it out with a lurching, 20-foot tyrannosaurus, and won.

As surprising as it seems, GWAR’s one joke is enough to sustain a 90-minute set. But although GWAR is larger than life, it’s not larger than larger-than-life, and the show that worked so brilliantly at the Country Club several months ago seemed lost in the huge spaces of the Palladium.