We Kill Everything
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| We Kill Everything | ||
 |
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| Studio album by GWAR | ||
| Released | April 6, 1999 | |
| Recorded | 1998-1999 | |
| Genre | Hardcore punk, heavy metal | |
| Length | 54:01 | |
| Label | Metal Blade Records | |
| Producer(s) | GWAR, Grant Rutledge, Mark Miley | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| GWAR chronology | ||
| Carnival of Chaos (1997) |
We Kill Everything (1999) |
Slaves Going Single (2000) |
GWAR returned in 1999 with their seventh album We Kill Everything, which severely disappointed many fans when compared to their prior albums. It is a whimsical album full of punkish potboilers, taking a note from Primus in its surrealistic goofiness. Truly sounds like a direction taken by their even less serious protege, Green Jelly.
Contents |
[edit] Story
The album's story differs slightly than the version told in "It's Sleazy" and on tour.
The first three tracks on the album do not follow one particular story, and focus on GWAR's generally decadent ways. The fourth, "A Short History of the End of the World (Part VII(The Final Chapter(abbr.)))", begins (though an instrumental, it is explained that it refers to GWAR fighting the Master - the incident that lead to their exile) the story, which continues through the title track.
This story chronicles GWAR's relationship with their Master, and the aftermath of their defiance. While GWAR was exiled to Earth, mystic Scumdog Scroda Moon went to search for them, only to be stranded on the moon with a tablet that supposedly chronicles all of time's events from the beginning to the end. After landing on Earth, GWAR somehow gets a hold of the tablet, and breaks it into pieces, which are promptly stolen (the album does not go into any more detail beyond this) and must be return, else the Master would come to destroy GWAR.
Moon, dismissed as a crackpot, summons his inter-dimensional "portal potty" to assist them in their search - to which GWAR agree, on the condition that he smoke crack and drink with them. After his initiation, and combat with various creatures holding the pieces, Scroda's limbs are separated from his body and he dies, only to be revived and improved by Slymenstra Hymen.
"The Master Has a Butt" deals with the Master, and GWAR's final showdown. The title track concludes the story, with GWAR emerging victorious.
The last five tracks have nothing to do with the story, and deal with specific instances of GWAR's decadence (as do the first three). Scroda Moon is not mentioned again.
[edit] Album Content
The band once again offers the funny ("Fishfuck") the gross ("Babyraper"), and the weird ("Penile Drip", in which Oderus does his best Brak impression). Mike Derks lends his vocals to the almost sensitive ballad, "Mary Anne". This album is mostly a collection of gruesomely faulty jokes ("Fucking an Animal" and "Nitro Burning Funny Bong"), and contains significantly less brutality and heart than their previous works. "A Short History of the End of the World (Part VII(The Final Chapter(abbr.)))" is the first (and, to date, only) true GWAR instrumental (the title track off of America Must Be Destroyed is a collection of samples over an instrumental track, and "Surf of Syn" on RagNaRok has Cardinal Syn's voice in the background), and showcases the musical capabilities of the band collective.
The lyrical content of We Kill Everything is in response to angry fans' complaints about the disgusting lyrics on Carnival of Chaos (or lack thereof). It is also the final GWAR album featuring Michael Bishop, who returned for a few months to replace Casey Orr as Beefcake the Mighty, Hunter Jackson (who would stay with the group until the end of 2000), Danielle Stampe (who toured until 2002), and Dave Musel on keyboards and samples. Bishop also brought along Tim Harriss, both of Kepone, to play Flattus Maximus. We Kill Everything is also the last album in the "Scumdogs" storyline (though "The Song Of Words" on Violence Has Arrived makes a reference to it).
Some of the songs are themselves as old as Scumdogs of the Universe, and at least three are remakes of older songs ("A Short History of the End of the World" being a remake of the "Cardinal Syn Theme" from 1989, and "Escape From The Mooselodge" a remake of "The Needle," which featured BalSac the Jaws of Death on vocals for the first time with GWAR; the former can be heard in the video "It's Sleazy," and the latter on Slaves Going Single); "Tune From Da Moon" is a remake of the Death Piggy song "Minute 2 Live", with new lyrics).
The title track is one of the two longest songs written by the band (Carnival of Chaos' "Sammy," at 6:57, like "We Kill Everything," is the other).
This is the first GWAR album not to feature Beefcake The Mighty on lead vocals since 1988, and Violence Has Arrived would continue that trend. "Jiggle The Handle" is the only song to feature Beefcake, as well as every other vocalist on the album, save one - Balsac the Jaws of Death. It also has the distinction of being the GWAR song with the most vocalists actually singing - five (Scroda Moon, Portal Potty, Oderus, Beefcake and Slymenstra). It is tied with RagNaRok for having the most vocalists (six - Jackson, Brockie, Stampe, Derks, Bishop and Bob Gorman - though the liner notes don't state who he is, several authorized sources claim him to be the Portal Potty). There are seven distinct characters on the album: the six aforementioned, as well as a narrator on "Escape From The Mooselodge," voiced by Dave Brockie (the song features him as the narrator and as Oderus).
We Kill Everything is the only other GWAR album to have been censored (the first was 1994's This Toilet Earth). The profanities are changed to various noises, and the titles "Fishfuck" and "Fuckin' An Animal" were omitted from the back cover. There also exists a Canadian release that too is censored on the back of the album, but is completely uncensored in the lyrics.
[edit] Lyric Error
The lyrics printed in the liner notes are not exactly the same as the lyrics in the songs themselves. Examples of such include, from "Child:"
- What she's really gonna get is a claw to the cunt
The correct lyric should be:
- What she's really gonna get is a kick in the cunt.
And from "Jiggle The Handle:"
- Now that I can use you, I'm gonna stop fucking around.
Should be:
- Now I know that I can use you; I'm gonna stop fucking around.
[edit] Videos
Like many of GWAR's albums, We Kill Everything spawned a movie: 2001's It's Sleazy. Featured in this film is one of two music videos for the album: "Nitro Burnin' Funny Bong." In the 2002 "Ultimate Video GWARchive" music video collection, Brockie states in the commentary for this video his disdain for this song, and most of the output from the time period of 1997-2000. Several parts of the song (including the entire second verse) are omitted from the video - in the "Ultimate Video GWARchive" commentary, Mike Derks states that an entire reel of footage is missing (a reel which, presumably, contains the second verse). Some fans of the band Tool have said that lead singer Maynard James Keenan is in the video for "Nitro Burnin' Funny Bong" in drag.
The second video, "Fuckin' An Animal," was recorded well before "It's Sleazy," and was not in the movie. It is available, albeit censored, in the "Ultimate Video GWARchive." It marks the first appearance of Zach Blair as Flattus Maximus, as well as the final appearance of Flattus' tail.
[edit] Band Dismissal
The members of GWAR don't really like to talk about We Kill Everything (a recent news post on their website confirms this: "...and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief that we hadn’t put out another “We Kill Everything”, no matter how much they might have enjoyed having sex with animals!"), and they rarely play more than one or two songs (usually just "Babyraper") from the album since the GWARmageddon 1999 tour. This could be due either to their dislike of the album, or by the fact that because most of the songs deal with a specific concept or have a former member, they are unable to be played (though in soundcheck before their concerts, they do play "Short History of the End of the World"). Brockie (Oderus Urungus) particularly dislikes the song "Nitro Burnin' Funny Bong," which he describes as "extremely annoying," along with the entire "It's Sleazy" video. However, Brockie, Derks and Brad Roberts (Jizmak Da Gusha) played "Nitro Burnin' Funny Bong" as the Dave Brockie eXperience, along with other GWAR songs (including "Fishfuck;" another We Kill Everything song that the band no longer plays live), though will probably never do so again, due to the dissolution of DBX. Also, on GWAR's 2006 DVD, titled "Blood Bath and Beyond," Oderus Urungus and Sleazy P. Martini describe Scroda Moon as "the stupidest GWAR character."
When it was active, GWAR's message board made it explicitly clear NOT to make mention of We Kill Everything, lest they who did such be banned from the forum.
It is hinted by the GWAR members from around this time (including Danielle Stampe) that this is the band's least successful album, both in record sales and in tour. The decline in album sales is directly addressed in "Escape from the Mooselodge", when Oderus proclaims, "Sales are dropping, riffs are slopping, can you smell the zits I'm popping? What the hell do we do?"
[edit] Track listing
| Track title | Vocals | Length | Vorbis sample? |
| "Babyraper" |
|
2:35 | |
| "Fishfuck" |
|
1:45 | |
| "The Performer" |
|
3:23 | |
| "A Short History of the End of the World (Part VII(The Final Chapter(abbr.)))" |
|
3:27 | |
| "Escape From the Mooselodge" |
|
5:24 | |
| "Tune from Da Moon" |
|
2:26 | |
| "Jiggle the Handle" |
|
5:28 | |
| "Nitro-Burnin' Funny Bong" |
|
3:27 | |
| "Jagermonsta" |
|
2:50 | |
| "My Girly Ways" |
|
2:59 | |
| "The Master Has a Butt" |
|
4:05 | |
| "We Kill Everything" |
|
6:57 | |
| "Child" |
|
2:51 | |
| "Penile Drip" |
|
2:38 | |
| "Mary Anne" |
|
2:42 | |
| "Friend" |
|
1:17 | |
| "Fuckin' An Animal" |
|
3:08 |
