GWAR have released a surprising cover of Chappell Roan‘s hit ‘Pink Pony Club’.
The costumed metal band are the latest guests on The A.V. Club’s latest season of A.V. Undercover, where they stopped by Chelsea Studios in New York City to transform the 2023 hit into a thrash metal song.
“‘Pink Pony Club’ is about embracing exile from a boring, shitty world and remaking yourself into whatever you want — be who you are, be who you aren’t, piss people off, we don’t care!” said the Berserker Blóthar, GWAR’s vocalist.
It’s not the first time GWAR have produced an “intergalactic metal” take on an unexpected song – in 2024, they covered ‘I’m Just Ken’ from the Barbie movie.
In addition, despite their differences in musical style, Roan and GWAR certainly share similar values. In November, Blöthar the Berserker signed a bidet that was aucitioned by John Oliver to raise funds for public broadcasting. Blöthar had previously hit out at the proposed cuts to public media, which followed Trump signing an executive order that would end the federal funding for organisations including NPR and PBS two months before.
GWAR also came under fire from Trump supporters in September following their Riot Fest set. During their set at the Chicago festival, they continued their long-standing tradition of carrying out a mock execution on stage.
Previous presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan have all been the subject of the faux assassinations before, as have the likes of Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson.
When Trump and Elon Musk were the targets in Chicago, it proved controversial. One person wrote, “That’s not edgy, it’s grotesque and reckless and normalises violence against a real person. This is not okay. Riot Fest and Gwar crossed a major line,” while another simply said, “The left is truly sick.”
The band responded, saying in a statement to Billboard that the idea they’re normalising violence is “absurd”.
“We’re not millionaires that are afraid of what people are going to say when they see what we do… We’re a group of artists that makes art, and it’s really the idea that what we have done is normalising violence… There’s nothing normal about the violence that goes on at a Gwar show,” he added.
“It’s a cartoon, it’s Looney Tunes… It’s trying to make violence into a spectacle and show humanity’s absolute absurdity. That’s what Gwar is, it’s absurdism. To say it’s normalising violence is really reaching.”