Gallery, ReviewDitch This MagazineDecember 05, 2025gallery, live, melbourne, Odin Imaging, Nathan Goldsworthy, odin imaging, Destroy All Lines, Gwar, Dregg, Max Watts

GWAR + Dregg @ Max Watts Melbourne 04-12-25

Gallery, ReviewDitch This MagazineDecember 05, 2025gallery, live, melbourne, Odin Imaging, Nathan Goldsworthy, odin imaging, Destroy All Lines, Gwar, Dregg, Max Watts

photos: Nathan Goldsworthy @odin.imaging

Max Watt’s has seen some wild shows, but nothing in its sticky, beer-soaked history prepared it for the intergalactic war-crime pageant GWAR unleashed. This wasn’t a concert — it was a slaughterhouse musical.

Dregg warmed the room up by detonating it, whipping the crowd into a twitching mass of limbs, sweat and chaotic energy. By the time GWAR slithered onto the stage, the audience looked like volunteers lined up for execution — smiling, thirsty, and fully consenting.

Then the carnage began.

First to go was an effigy of Elon Musk, whose head was removed with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for lotto winners and tax rebates. Then came President Trump, gutted like a giant spray-filled piñata of American dysfunction. A priest was dragged out and violated so aggressively the crowd didn’t know whether to cheer, cry, or call the Vatican hotline. And just when you thought it couldn’t get darker, GWAR rolled out the most hated creature in Australian folklore: the stingray that killed Steve Irwin — and tore it apart like a national exorcism.

Max Watt’s became a baptismal font of blood, slime and weaponised satire. You couldn’t stand anywhere without being coated in something warm, wet, and probably illegal in several jurisdictions. The pit churned like a demonic washing machine. People screamed, laughed, slipped, fell, and helped each other back up — a beautiful community bonded through mutual fake-gore trauma.

Musically, GWAR were razor-sharp. Every riff sounded like it was slashing open another politician. Every drum hit felt like a body hitting the floor. They didn’t play songs; they orchestrated massacres.

By the end of the night, the crowd stumbled out of Max Watt’s drenched head to toe, looking like survivors of a crime scene that would take investigators years to emotionally process.

Only GWAR could turn beheading billionaires, gutting presidents, defiling clergy and avenging Steve Irwin into the most uplifting night of the year.