As Metal Blade Records put it on Twitter, “GWAR = too hot for @YouTube ads!” Yesterday, the label received a notice from the video streaming platform that indicated their video for “I’ll Be Your Monster” has been deemed inappropriate for all advertisers.
What does that mean? Essentially that the video will still be playable on the website like any other video, but won’t have any ads beforehand or after – meaning it won’t be able to earn subscription revenue. Metal Blade boils it down to the most simple terms: the video’s “too offensive to slap wix website or meal box ads in front of.” So as a fan, you’ll notice no difference.
Check out the video below. In the clip, a girl goes to bed in a creepy old house, which has been invaded by the members of GWAR, who accost her in her bedroom as she flees downstairs to her parents. The action, like just about everything GWAR does, is highly-cartoonish and tongue-in-cheek. Beefcake the Mighty raids the downstairs refrigerator and orders a pizza while Blöthar the Berserker (the band’s new lead singer, taking over for Oderus Urungus. At this point, while the action’s a bit scary, it’s hard to see the issue advertisers have with the video.
Then it becomes more apparent. The pizza man arrives, and promptly has his head crushed into the pizza box, turning him into some sort of flattened pizza face man. Mom is the next to face a gruesome death as she arrives in the daughter’s bedroom and has her innards torn out by three members of the band until she’s nothing but a pile of body parts. Finally, the go for dad, who fights back but ultimately has his stomach ripped open (a move they often pull onstage with a giant Donald Trump). Despite the campiness of GWAR, the practical effects are quite good and it becomes fairly obvious why Wix and Blue Apron weren’t exactly thrilled to have their products be the thing consumers associate with humans being torn apart limb by limb.
Surely the next time GWAR makes a video, those space alien overlords will take Youtube’s advice and review the information on advertiser-friendly guidelines.
Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna
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