Welcome to What Are You Playing?, a new feature where we’ll be exploring the world of video games. Each week, we’ll be asking a notable artist what game or games they’re playing. We start things off with legendary GWAR frontman Oderus Urungus, who enjoys killing Nazi Zombies in Call of Duty. We also asked him about being immortalized in the Beavis and Butt-Head video game.
We hear you play a lot of Call Of Duty, correct?
Yes it is! Absolutely correct. I’m not really so much into the campaign games. I play Nazi Zombies exclusively. There’s many zombie mods now. Tons of them come out. But there’s a series of a few that are just the Nazi Zombie ones (World At War and Black Ops). For me, killing zombies is much more satisfying when they’re in full SS regalia.
That’s it, huh?
That’s it! Honestly, my life is basically a video game. Everyone is like “What do you do for Halloween?” and I’m like ‘Well, it’s basically Halloween every fucking day when you’re in GWAR.’ And the same thing goes for our general existence. Killing zombies is no big deal, but for some reason this game really grabbed me and I’ve been fairly addicted to it ever since I first stumbled on it a couple of years ago. I’m a completely devoted Nazi Zombie slayer.
Have you played previous Call Of Duty games?
Oh yeah, I had played them before throughout the years. I really liked World At War the best, with World War II being my favorite war. Most people have things like favorite colors. I have favorite wars. I’ve always liked the game’s system and the dark humor behind it. The gore is great, it doesn’t let up. There’s attention to detail, the weapons are completely accurate. So, I was already a big fan of the game but then my friend was like “Oh, you gotta try the zombies thing. If you get to the end of the game, you get this weird level where zombies are trying to kill you.” And I was like ‘What?’ So we played through the whole thing and I was just fucking addicted to it. People are like “How do you win?” and I’m like ‘You don’t win!’ You don’t win life! Nobody gets out of here alive! Nobody wins in zombies. And what kind of victory is that for them anyway? Rotting off and being just generally miserable creatures.
Do you play online with people or just do the solo campaign?
Oh yeah, I love to play online. It’s so funny. You’ll be playing with some weirdo from Finland and he won’t have a clue that he’s playing with Oderus Urungus. Sometimes I’ll bring up GWAR in conversation and I’ll tell you, that’s a good way to get some objective criticism about your band. I’m amazed. I love playing online, it’s a great way to keep up with people. We’ll be running zombie parties and one dude will be from South Africa, another dude will be from Amsterdam, another dude will be from Antarctica and that’s me.
Do you set up times to play with certain people or do you just go in and find games?
I do both. I enjoy the random element of it, just getting in there and meeting some new people and hearing some new human gibberish. It definitely helps us as musicians to have our finger on the pulse of the temperament of the human race. And what better way to do that than to play video games with them? There’s a social aspect I really enjoy and we have our hardcore regular group as well.
I have to ask about an older game you were kind of involved with and that would be the Beavis and Butt-head game.
[laughs] Yeah that game was a real bitch! I never made it all the way through but from what I understand, fans of ours have always complained “That game is too fucking hard!” I have yet to meet anyone who actually got to the secret level where Beavis and Butt-head are in little GWAR slave outfits and me and Balsac are beating the shit out of them. All the controller does is control GWAR beating Beavis and Butt-head basically.
That happened? That’s amazing!
Yeah! We were really stoked about that. You know it’s sad that GWAR hasn’t made their own video game, and that this has been as far as we’ve gotten in the world of fucking video games. But I’m sure it will happen at some point. It costs so fucking much to make, you know? These people who write code are like speaking Swahili. People really know how to do it well and unless they can sell it at Wal-Mart, they’re not interested in half a million dollars to develop a proper video game for GWAR. But we do have the goal. We do want to create the absolute sickest, most sexually perverted, most violent, most fucked up video game ever fucking created. And it’ll happen sooner or later. That the great advantage of the band being immortal. We can just keep trying and trying until we finally get it right. It might take several hundred years.
For the Playstation 18!
Yeah, you won’t even have Playstations, you won’t even have video games. It’ll just be like a wireless hook up to your cerebral cortex and you’ll basically just live and dream everything in a virtual reality and then there won’t be any telling the difference between the two and then we’ll have a real problem on our hands.
What are you looking forward to in 2013?
Hmm. I am looking forward to going to Russia. I’m a huge World War II freak and next year I’ll be traveling to Russia, but not with the band. I’m actually going to go in disguise as a human being and I’m going to tour some of my favorite battlefields in Russia. I’m going to be going to Moscow and Kursk and Stalingrad. It’s basically something we’ve been setting up for the last couple of years. You wouldn’t think Oderus was so concerned with his children, but the way you guys slaughter each other on the field of battle has always been very interesting to me. So it’s going to be a super busy year. In my personal life I’m looking forward to my fucking Russia trip, but I’m also looking forward to our new album coming out. We’ve been working on this record all fucking year, it’s the debut of Pustulus, and it kind of tells the story of what happens after the world ends. So everyone is getting off on the apocalypse right now, but I’m thinking about a year down the road. What happens after the world is over goddammit?! The new GWAR album is kind of a look into the future and a grim warning about what’s in store for the human race unless they get their fucking shit together.
When are you thinking it will come out?
We’re busy working on it right now. The plan is to get done here within the next 3 months and have it out probably by the end of the summer time and then BOOM! Big gigantic fucking fall tour.
