The Classic Metal Album Reviews:
Title: This Toilet Earth
Artist: GWAR
Label: Metal Blade Records
Release Date: 1994

Rating: 4 Skulls
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    • Reviewed by Redwolff:
    I don't recall how I ended up with this album; honestly, I think it must have been in one of those "10 for a penny" deals, because it's hard for me to believe I'd pay full price for GWAR. However, while a lot of quality albums have since been traded in for other things, This Toilet Earth has remained in my collection. Amazing and bizarre.

    The album kicks off with the again-topical "Saddam-a-Go-Go" - remember when we hated him the first time? When we could do it innocently without the guilt over manufacturing excuses to attack his country (this from a Republican)? That's the only politically-minded song on this album, which immediately degrades into schoolboy-caliber toilet humor and songs about penises. The centerfold of the CD booklet displays an artwork by Dave Brockie and Dan Sites, modeled after Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, depicting "The Discovery of Jizmoglobin" (you can imagine). "Jizmoglobin" is explained in "The Insidious Soliloquy Of Skulhed Face" thusly: What is it that makes the ideal man? / Bravado? Machismo? / Is it something secreted from a gland? / It's called Jizmoglobin!

    This Toilet Earth also contains the song "B.D.F", which stands for Baby Dick Fuck, with choice lyrics not for the faint of heart:

    The delivery room is as still as a tomb
    I fuck the child while it's still in your womb
    The child is now dead and you start to blubber
    Fuck your warm corpse with your child as a rubber

    That song later brilliantly rhymes "obsidian" with "Branch Davidian". Wow, the imagery, right? It's not like these guys didn't think about their lyrics. Well, sometimes. "Pocket Pool" contains the line He's just a flippy flappy happy slappy kind of crappy clown.

    GWAR is, of course, so over the top that it's impossible to take them seriously. If I believed for a second that they actually bought into their own fiction I couldn't find them as funny as I do. They poke fun at metal as much as at society's mores, making a ridiculous farce of almost everything I hold dear. And yet, it's good to get away from the seriousness of life now and again. One of these days, before they get too old to tour, I've got to go see them live. See you in the front row, covered in blood.
    4 out of 5

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