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Lust In Space is an addicting new addition to Gwar’s ever expanding library of albums. Adding both to their old antics, charm and humor as well as improving their music as a whole, Lust In Space takes their metal into several new galaxies of mind blowing astonishment.

The Good : Continues the titular adventures of Gwar, vastly improved style of metal, good for a laugh; a good combination of raunchiness and depravity rolled into one, some songs are pretty addicting, great story/lyrics, some great riffs to be heard, displays some unique qualities not found in most other bands, notable songs include Metal Metal Land, Damnation Under God, and Lust In Space

The Bad: Some songs feel more spoken than sung, skipped tracks here and there, got bored at points, couldn’t get into a couple songs, music didn’t seem to mix well with vocals at points, songs feel either extremely well or poorly done i.e. no gray line, better listened to live in concert to get full effect

Gwar whose fictional biography is way too long to get into and spans over eleven studio albums, two EP’s, and two live albums. There’s a lot of history behind Gwar, and all of it fascinating and mainly comedic at the same time. For all intentional purposes for those who have not yet had the pleasure of being introduced to Gwar, let’s just say that they are a couple of interplanetary Gods who have been sentenced to life on Earth. They love to eat, drink, kill, rock and have sex, just like any other God out there and it serves as a main focal point for many of their songs and live performances.

Lust In Space continues the story where Beyond Hell left off where the band tries now to leave their prison that is the planet Earth and venture off into space where they shall once again resume their adventures. Many things end up hindering their escape from Earth including an impending attack by Cardinal Syn. They seek help from Zog who turns out to be useless in helping Gwar but in the end everything works out and they finally leave Earth to pursue greater things promising to stop back on Earth for tours. This is what I love about Gwar, they’re a band that takes their comedic styling to a whole new level by adding a new story to each of their albums that continues through to the next all the while keeping things fresh and memorable.

The album starts with an amazing intro song that prepares you for what’s to come later on, explaining Gwar’s current situation and what they strive for in doing by the end of the album. This intro song aka “Lust In Space” is also definitely one of the more notable songs on the album, it’s a very melodramatic yet oh so very addicting tune that feels something like a mix between Iron Maiden and Opeth. It makes for an amazing opener and pulls you right into listening in further to the rest that is in store.

Their music has also vastly improved over previous years especially if you compare this album with some of their earlier works. There is a definite change in everything from how they’ve changed up some of the pacing and timing all the way to certain lyrical content most notably if you take a song from this album such as “Metal Metal Land” and compare it to one of their earliest songs “I Hate Love Songs”. There have been a couple changes but it’s good to see the band getting back into the thrash metal scene. It’s a good fit for them and hopefully they stick with it in the long run since it’s a proven formula that seems to have worked with this album and a couple of their last albums to date.

What hasn’t really changed over all these years is their style of humor, it’s still as raunchy and taboo as ever hitting on everything from sexual taboo, to drinking, killing, and everything else in between. There’s never really a dull moment when it comes to Gwar, especially when seen live in concert. Their live performances take things to epic proportions. It’s like no other live performance you’ve ever seen, all I can say is that you have to go see it to actually believe it.

Where I just said that things never really get dull when it comes to Gwar, well that’s only half true concerning this album. There were just some songs I just couldn’t get into what so ever where it got to the point where I was listening through the album a couple times just skipping through to the tracks that I actually did like. Take for example “Where Is Zog?” it’s actually a pretty well done song after you get past the intro but just listening to the first twenty five seconds and hearing the same three words over and over again being droned on just didn’t cut it for me and I would almost immediately skip tracks.

Another thing that bothered me was that some songs felt more spoken than sung and felt monotonous at certain points. When sung the music just seemed to flow and was nothing but exciting and heart pounding. As soon as a track would start off spoken and kept like that for a good minute or so, it just felt mediocre and a total bore to be heard. In my opinion I found that most songs on the album were either really well done or really poorly done with no fine gray lining in between. There were even points on some tracks where the music and vocals didn’t really seem to mix and sync that well and would feel totally off and would ruin that certain track for myself.

For the most part though, the good definitely overshadows the bad. With notable tracks like “Metal Metal Land” and “Damnation Under God” it becomes really hard to truly hate this album. Lust In Space is an album with not only a good sense of humor but also rocks out to its fullest and for that I commend it. With another milestone surpassed by Gwar and now leading into their 25th anniversary, Lust In Space has proven to be one of their best works in their 25 years of thrashing, killing, drinking and the likes. Only time will tell where their next adventure will lead them, but knowing these guys it’s going to be out of this world.

7.6/10

Damnation Under God by Gwar
Lust In Space by Gwar
Metal Metal Land by Gwar