GWAR Announce New Album 'The New Dark Ages'

The LP also ties in with a companion graphic novel

BY Megan LaPierrePublished Jan 25, 2022

Gory metal idols GWAR return to gwarrior on with the announcement of their 15th studio album.

The New Dark Ages lands digitally June 3 and arrives on vinyl and cassette on September 16 via the band's own Pit Records.

It follows their 2017 effort The Blood of the Gods, which was their first LP after the death of ringleader Dave Brockie (a.k.a Oderus Urungus) in 2014.

The New Dark Ages is a sprawling concept album that ties into a companion graphic novel — in collaboration with Z2 Comics — titled GWAR in the Duoverse of Absurdity, chronicling the Scumdogs of the Universe's blockbuster crusade against their doppelgängers from an alternate reality.

Sonically, a release described the LP as a "kaleidoscope of hard-driving heavy metal and rock-'n'-fucking-roll," with the band building on their inimitable mythos and "cataloguing mankind's hapless abandonment of their passions, rituals and beliefs."

"This is the greatest rock record of all time," the Berserker Blóthar said modestly in a statement. "These are the songs for a new age — a New Dark Age — when men live by the dimming light of a technology destined to betray them. Listen as we have a rock and roll orgy in the ruins of the world to celebrate humanity's descent into an age of darkness, disease, ignorance and death." Sounds like fun?

Of the graphic novel, Bälsäc the Jaws 'O Death added: "This was the most utterly engrossing book I've ever read! I couldn't wait until I'd read what was on the page before I was compelled to turn it! This novel has the one element that is missing in so many so-called literary masterpieces: it's about me!"

A tracklist for The New Dark Ages has yet to be shared, let alone a single, but the album is now available for pre-order. You can get a preview of some of what's available in the elaborate merch packages below.



Last year, GWAR fans crowdsurfed a prosthetic leg back to its owner and Scott Barber-directed documentary This Is GWAR premiered at CuFF.Docs.

Latest Coverage