Carnival of Chaos

The bands 6th album, Carnival of Chaos, came out in 1997. This album is currently Gwar’s longest album, clocking in at over 74 minutes. This contains Slymentsra Hymen’s first solo song, “Don’t Need a Man” which is a lounge jazz-like song. Hunter Jackson also makes his return in “The Private Pain of Techno Destructo” there is also a balled, “Sammy”, about the rotting corpse of Sammy Davis Jr. “In Her Fear” is Oderous’s swan song, and Beefcake the Mighty comes back with his own song, “Hate Love Songs” Casey Orr’s last song as lead vocals, until his return in 2009. This is also the last album to feature Peter Lee as Flattus Maximus. “Don’t Need a Man” is interesting because it wasn’t intended to be a Gwar song, rather just Slymenstra singing with BalSac playing piano. So, it was meant to be a piano ballad. It then ended up with Mike Derks (BalSac), doing the rest of the instruments. (Playing the piano, sequencing the other instruments)\* Derks also produced the track, though received zero credit. Derks also wrote “Hate Love Songs”, which he was supposed to sing, but then it ended up being sung by Casey Orr (Beefcake the Mighty). About nine minutes after “Don’t Need a Man” is a clip of “Drop Drawers”, which was supposed to be on the album but for legal reasons wasn’t. “Don’t Need a Man” has a run time of 14 minutes, because of the hidden “Drop Drawers” most of that run time is silence otherwise. “Drop Drawers” can later be found on the 2000’s Slaves Going Single, an extremely rare B-sides collection released on Slave Pit Records. “Sammy” is the longest song on this album almost being 7 minutes. Despite “Don't Need A Man”’s 12:40 track length (as mentioned before, most of it is silence; the actual song is a little less than 4:30 long). Sammy and then We Kill Everything's titletrack from 1999, were the longest songs by the band until the song “War on GWAR” (7:21) was released on 2017's *The Blood of Gods.* Note, the 30th anniversary remix of Scumdogs of the Universe includes the entire version of “King Queen”, which clocks in at 8:09, making it the longest Gwar song to appear on a studio album. That was up until 2022, where on the album *The New Dark Ages*, there was the instrumental track “Dues Ex Monstrum” which is over 10 minutes. Carnival songs have been rather absent from the band live setlist, with no explanation as to why. But Carnival wasn’t that big of an album, and most of the track are experimental and goofy so that might be one of the reasons. Around the time of this album, some members of Gwar also appeared on the Jerry Springer show to discuss “shock-rock” Dave Brockie was later asked in an interview how fake that segment was, and he stated that though it wasn’t scripted, the majority of it besides the band themselves being there and presenting their case, was fake.

\*Some sources say Brad Roberts (Jizmak Da Gusha) did the drums on "Don't Need a Man" others say it was sequenced by Derks.

## Personnel

* Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus) - Lead vocals
* Pete Lee (Flattus Maximus) – Lead guitar, backing vocals
* Mike Derks (Balsac the Jaws of Death) – Rhythm guitar, backing vocals
* Casey Orr (Beefcake the Mighty) – Bass, backing vocals, lead vocals on "Hate Love Songs"
* Brad Roberts (Jizmak Da Gusha) - Drums
* Hunter Jackson (Techno Destructo) - Lead vocals on "The Private Pain of Techno Destructo"
* Danielle Stampe (Slymenstra Hymen) – Lead vocals on "Don't Need a Man"
* Ron Goudie – Producer, Mixing
* Warren Croyle – Mixing
* Gene Grimaldi – Mastering
* Katherine Leatherwood – Photography
* Drew Mazurek – Mixing
* Mark Miley – Assistant Engineer, Drum Producer
* Grant Rutledge – Assistant Engineer
* Eddy Schreyer – Mastering