Image: YouTube / TEDx Talks

GWAR Make Ritualistic Sacrifice At Frontman’s TED Talk

You read that correctly — thrash metal menaces GWAR have sacrificed a man in order to make way for a TED Talk by their own frontman, Michael “Blothar” Bishop.

As seen in footage of the incident, Mr Bishop — that’s Dr Michael Bishop, actually — was just about to speak to a Richmond, Virginia crowd about GWAR’s history before some suit took to the stage without his microphone.

Appropriately, the suit was swiftly reprimanded, and had his face ripped clean off before being dragged away to the crowd’s amusement. Catch the sacrifice in full, below.

Once that was over and done with, Dr Bishop took the stage and introduced himself as “the human slave of the berserker Blothar, who is the new lead singer of GWAR”.

Dr Bishop, who has a PhD in music, went on to detail GWAR’s beginnings, saying the band were aliens who became trapped in the ice of Antartica only to be thawed out by a hole in the ozone layer created by the riduclous amounts of hairspray used by bands like Ratt and Poison.

“But really, Gwar is from Richmond, Virginia,” Dr Bishop said. “And what I’ve found is that being from [Richmond] is almost as strange as being from Antarctica.”

Elsewhere in his TED Talk, Dr Bishop discussed regional identity and its relation to the weird and wonderful world of GWAR. The super-interesting keynote covered topics like slavery, the tobacco industry and the sociopolitical tensions which shaped GWAR’s beginnings.

Catch GWAR’s ritualistic sacrifice and Dr Bishop’s full TED Talk, below.

Watch: GWAR Make Ritualistic Sacrifice At Frontman’s TED Talk

Gallery: GWAR – Factory Theatre, Sydney 26.02.14 / Photos: Ashley Mar

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