GWAR On Getting Death Threats For Cartoonishly Eviscerating Trump & Musk Onstage: "This Is The Country Where We’re Supposed To Be Able To Do That!"

Despite decades of skewering — sometimes literally — various comical effigies of politicians, foreign dictators, monarchs, beloved celebrities and more, it was GWAR running afoul of the MAGA movement in 2025 that seemingly provoked the most disturbing backlash they’ve faced.

The larger-than-life shock metal band’s live shows frequently involve cartoonish gore, where outlandish depictions of various people of current public interest meet gruesome ends onstage in campy fashion, all while fake blood (and sometimes other unseemly substances) spray freely over the audience.

Last fall, footage of GWAR disemboweling U.S. President Donald J. Trump (an activity they had engaged in during Trump‘s first term too) and beheading billionaire Elon Musk onstage during the annual ‘Riot Fest‘ in Chicago, IL caught the radar of MAGA influencers. That footage led to outright condemnation and accusations of inciting violence against conservative-aligned individuals being lodged against the band. As you might expect in this heated political climate, it also led to death threats.

One of the most prominent influencers in MAGA circles, Libs Of TikTok, publicly decried GWAR publicly as follows at the time:

“Performers at Riot Fest in Chicago, Illinois, simulated the bloody disemboweling of President Trump on stage while people cheered.

This is incitement. They know exactly what they’re doing.

Democrats can’t help themselves. They love promoting violence.”

With GWAR long reveling in the absurd, complete with an elaborate backstory that depicts the band’s members as being part of a scummy alien race, vocalist Blöthar The Berserker downplayed the backlash and accusations in the press, keeping up his outlandish stage persona. In the immediate aftermath of the ‘Riot Fest‘ footage, he told, told Billboard:

“The idea that GWAR is normalizing violence is patently absurd.”

“We’re not millionaires that are afraid of what people are going to say when they see what we do… Yeah, it pissed me off! We’re a group of artists that makes art, and it’s really the idea that what we have done is normalizing violence… there’s nothing normal about the violence that goes on at a GWAR show. It’s a cartoon, it’s Looney Tunes.”

He went on to add:

“Like I know this is a rage bait engagement farming twitter account, but ‘GWAR crossed a major line’ is one of the funniest f–king things I’ve ever heard. The dumbest people on the internet are still mad today. Got to love it. As long as they keep posting that awesome video and mentioning our name for the free publicity it’s a win for me.”

While GWAR seemingly took the controversy in stride and have since doubled down (ICE and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have been more recent targets at their live shows,) the death threats the band did receive weren’t brushed off as easily.

In a recent feature on the rise of popularity of masks in metal published over at The Guardian, GWAR‘s rhythm guitarist Mike Derks (aka Balsac The Jaws Of Death) spoke about the sobering nature of those death threats. He also addressed the irony that the the criticism came about in a country that champions free speech, given GWAR‘s long hitlist of similar ‘sacrifices’ of individuals that hold power in countries that don’t afford such personal freedoms:

“In a sense, it’s just laughable, but it was scary when we were getting death threats over social media. It did get me very upset when people were trying to say: ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ This is the country where we’re supposed to be able to do that! People were saying we can’t do it after we’d been doing it for 40 years.”