Tommy Meehan of GWAR: 10 Albums That Changed My Life

Feature Photo by Becky DiGiglio

Though often off-the-beaten path, obscure, or to some, downright weird, the music that’s shaped GWAR guitarist Tommy Meehan, aka Grodius Maximus’s journey means a lot. Just ask him: “I wanted to put some care and thought into this,” he says. “Because these albums were life-changing to me.” Of course, that’s the aim here, right? To dig in with artists of all shapes, sizes, and creeds to discover where they came from, why they do the things they do, and, you know… figure out what the hell makes ’em tick.

As for Meehan, who joined the iconic and always shocking hard rock and heavy metal band GWAR at the top of 2024 after the departure of Brent Purgason, he digs deep when it comes to his proverbial musical clock. When Meehan isn’t melting audiences’ faces with GWAR, he’s got a myriad of side projects, such as Cancer Christ, and a record label to run, Sweatband Records. His aim with the former is to harvest his pulsating creativity and unleash it unto the unsuspecting masses. Check.

As for the latter, Sweatband Records, Meehan’s love for vinyl and all things physical media, and supporting indie acts deemed “too weird” for other labels are just two things constantly being cultivated by the endeavor. Check. Lately, much of Meehan’s time has been taken up by touring the States with GWAR; there’s undoubtedly more to come. But for now, he’s got a pocket of time, and we took advantage of that to beam in with Tommy Meehan to grab the ten albums that changed his life.

Vicuna – Nuclear Rabbit (1996)

Before I had heard of Primus, Mr. Bungle, or any of the other mainstream “weirdo” bands, I had become obsessed with Northern California’s Nuclear Rabbit. I was in middle school, and my sister was living with their bass player, Jean Baudin. The album is a spazzy, aggressive, cartoony freakout of slap bass, jazz chords, and extreme zaniness. Vicuna mystified me. The odd time signatures, strange harmonic arrangements, and unorthodox playing techniques were things I hadn’t previously been exposed to.

Nuclear Rabbit was also my introduction to the DIY punk scene. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, I would see them play at The Phoenix Theater in Petaluma (and other local venues) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Eventually, my high school band, The Brockly Tacos, would go on to open for them, which was a dream come true for me. The record sounds, to me, like a bunch of bunnies and fu*ked up creatures getting flung from slingshots inside of a bounce house while a bunch of candy and nuclear waste rains down from the ceiling.

Street Mixxx – DJ Embryonic Petit Sac (2014)

My introduction to DJ Embryonic Petit Sac occurred back in 2005 when the amphibious entity himself handed me a burnt 3″ CD-R with little frog stickers all over it. He was attending a Brockly Tacos show and must have felt a kinship with what we were doing because he decided to give me his album. The CD, entitled Street Mixxx, was initially a limited edition one of six pressing… he’s gone on to press more over the years, but if you ever find one, know that they are extremely rare. I had never heard anything like it before—and I still haven’t, really. I was perplexed and enthralled. This is one of those albums that made me say to myself, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

The album is a mash-up of overdriven found audio, snippets from video games and movies, and curated dialogue from his college theater troupe performances. It is all played through first-generation Kaoss Pads and a DJ mixer. Seemingly, there is no structure on Street Mixxx. It’s a collage of madness stitched together in what feels like a nonsensical fashion. Complete disregard for any preconceived “laws of music” or production technique, etc. It was my first time experiencing somebody saying, “Fu*k you!” to music and I loved it.

This record subverted my expectations of what music and sound could be. I don’t think you can even listen to this anywhere currently, unless you have a physical copy. I gotta talk to Sac about doing a re-re-release of this on Sweatband Records.

Swidden – Blackbird Raum (2008)

I saw this band play at a little DIY venue called Pehrspace in Los Angeles around 2009, I think. It was the first time I ever saw a mosh pit go down without the use of amplifiers, drums, or a PA system. This was my first real introduction to folk punk, and the band inspired me to pick up a banjo and start my band, The Manx.

Blackbird Raum shreds out anti-police, anti-government, pro-environmentalist anthems of hope and despair with banjo, accordion, mandolin, washtub bass, and washboards. Each member adds their own distinct vocal stylings, which keeps things feeling fresh from track to track. The songs are incredibly well crafted as sing-alongs, but there are also a lot of prog aspects to the arrangements. They’ll often execute odd time signatures, they’re incredibly dynamic, and there is a crusty rawness that you can only really find within folk punk. This band is one of my favorites in the genre.

Spot The Psycho – Corn Bugs (1999)

I discovered Buckethead in my early teens and immediately dove headfirst into anything and everything I could pick up at Amoeba, Tower Records, or Rasputin Music. Naturally, I was also obsessed with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, so when I found out that Buckethead and Bill Moseley had started a project together, I was overcome with joy and excitement.

I ordered Spot The Pyscho from choptopsbbq.com in 2003, and when I received the burned CD-R and an autographed Chop Top print, I became obsessed with the quirky riffs, the wild monologues, and the low-fi nature of the recording. Buckethead’s playing on this album is raw and is usually restricted to one-takes with what sounds like little to no overdubs.

I found this exciting. It made me feel like I could do something similar. It sounded, to me, like an album that I could make with cheap equipment in my own bedroom. It was encouraging and inspiring to listen to it in a way I hadn’t previously experienced. I had recently made a new friend named Jesse Maxwell at my high school, and we would listen to this album repeatedly on my mom’s Tercel. We became inspired to start our own two-piece band, so we formed The Brockly Tacos.

Totally Krossed Out – Kriss Kross (1992)

This is the first album I ever heard—the first music I ever heard, really. My parents didn’t listen to music in the house, so I never grew up with The Beatles or Yes or The Rolling Stones or whatever everyone else my age grew up listening to because of their parents.

I was on a class trip to a museum in elementary school, and my pal Alex Hermes had a WalkmanTM and the Totally Krossed Out cassette tape with him. We put our heads together to share his headphones as we bounced up and down in our bus seat to the tune of “Jump Jump.” It was an electric feeling that I hadn’t experienced previously.

It was also really cool knowing that the Kriss Kross dudes were both really young because I was also just a young boy. I think they were 11 and 12 or something when they recorded this album. I was seven or eight years old, I think. I wanted to braid my hair so badly.

Violence Has Arrived – GWAR (2001)

When I first popped this album in, I knew the Bohabs were in for a different ride altogether. Compared to anything else that GWAR had put out previously, this album felt deadly serious… for the most part. From the ominous and tense opening of “Hell Intro” to the blistering gallop and beatdown of “Battle Lust,” tracks like the eternally epic “Immortal Corruptor” and the disgusting and pummeling “Lick Sore” had me enthralled and entranced.

I would skate around my hometown of Novato, California, just blasting these songs on a WalkmanTM during my teen years. I learned how to play the entire album on guitar, and anytime I would jam with kids in hopes of starting a band, I’d ask if they were into GWAR because they had become such a huge inspiration to me. The first time I saw GWAR was in 2002 at The Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, CA. They were touring this album, and the show completely blew my mind. I remember being overcome with emotion. The band delivered everything I could’ve ever asked for: ripping metal, gore, and dark humor. That night, I became a lifelong fan.

I felt a kinship and a serious connection with what they were doing artistically and politically. The way they shoved the darkest and most depraved parts of society and humankind back into its own fu*ked up face really resonated with me. The whole thing just seemed very next level and ahead of it’s time to me.

GWAR has always gone above and beyond as a band and as an art collective and I subscribe to that way of working as well. If something is worth doing, go all the way. And if it’s gonna upset people, double down and go even fucking harder with it because confronting your bullshit is essential to growth. As a society, as a people, we need to face harsh truths. I firmly believe that GWAR is good for humanity on a level that not a lot of people are able to fully grasp or appreciate. Or maybe it’s just silly, decadent rock and roll for dipshits; I don’t know. But that’s the beauty of GWAR.

Phase 2 – Daikaiju (2010)

This band re-ignited my interest in the guitar after not playing for almost five years or so. I became obsessed with surf music. The surfy tones and the noodley, reverbed-out guitar passages were really exciting to me. I found myself writing a lot of my own surf music around this time. I was composing music for Cartoon Network at the time on a show called Uncle Grandpa. It was a fun, upbeat, surreal, and tripped-out show about a dude who was everyone in the world’s uncle and grandpa at the same time. The surfy jams just seemed to work well with the show.

I was listening to Daikaiju for years before I ever saw them live, and when I finally did, holy shit… this band is insane to witness in person. They somehow coax the audience into crowd-surfing the drummer—along with most of his drum kit—without ever skipping a beat in the song. I’ve seen shows where their guitar player [Santanu Mitra] will just suddenly be playing on top of the roof of the venue.

Mid-set, they will sometimes move the whole show from inside to outside without any notice… during the performance… again, without skipping a beat. It’s completely bonkers, and I don’t know how they pull shit like that off—tons of fire and sweat and just pure energy. I’m getting goosebumps right now just thinking about it—a must-see live band.

Of Natural History – Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (2004)

I bought this CD at a show in San Francisco on Halloween 2005. I dove in fully, studying the lyrics and liner notes, the intricate structures, rhythms, timbres, and themes, and really trying to decode everything. There’s a poetry with this band that’s unlike anything I’ve ever really experienced. A charisma and a gentle but serious message that they deliver in a most violent and elegant manner. They play homemade musical instruments while putting on a demented stage show that transports the audience onto another timeline and into another universe altogether.

Thematically, musically, or otherwise, the album simultaneously challenges and embraces tradition. It warns of a hellish future for mankind as humans continue to industrialize and drain the Earth of its resources. References to Ted Kaczynski [the Unabomber] and other anti-humanist themes weave in and out of the record while sonically delivering a strange dual citizenship of grim desolation and familial warmth. You can hear and feel the metal, wood, meat, and souls of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum in this record.

The taste of their collective spirit can be felt with your own heart while listening and absorbing their message. Label things all you want. You can call this album prog, metal, folk, theater, jazz, and a million other things, but it’s none and all those things at once. Of Natural History disregards convention in all the best ways, and I think it’s a true masterpiece.

Planet of the Apes Orginal Soundtrack – Jerry Goldsmith (1968)

Another obsession of mine. The original series of Planet of the Apes, meaning the first five movies, absolutely rip. You can’t really go wrong with apocalyptic sci-fi in general, and this series really nailed it by setting an amazing tone on the original film. Musically, Jerry Goldsmith keeps the listener/viewer on their toes with wild shifts in dynamics, totally unorthodox melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. It sounds like he’s composing music with weird alien bones and drums made of skin and hair, bizarre instruments made of gut strings, and delay effects.

Lots of brass, tuned percussion, weird ape vocalizations… I don’t know what Jerry Goldsmith was using to make all these wild sounds back in 1968. I need to look it up. One of my favorite aspects is that the musical themes and motifs hardly ever repeat. Or when they do, some kind of shift or change will take place to keep things feeling new and exciting. The whole thing just feels like alien music from another dimension to me. Primitive alien music. Leonard Rosenman’s score to Beneath the Planet of the Apes is great, too.

Neon Corpse Parade: Vol. 1 by Various Artists (2020)

Just before we formed Cancer Christ, St. Anthony and I decided to put together a compilation record for my label, Sweatband Records, to showcase a bunch of the rad music being created within our scene. Los Angeles in the late 2010’s2010s was giving birth to a ton of sick shit, and the community of musicians who lived here was really banding together in a way that I hadn’t seen before. Anthony and I had been friends for a few years already at this point. We met at a Manx show. He would regularly cruise out and photograph us and a ton of other bands in and around the Los Angeles area.

He quickly became one of my favorite photographers and one of my favorite people. For the compilation record, we got a ton of weird and twisted tracks from bands like Melted Bodies, Prissy Whip, The Manx, and Major Entertainer. We even snuck a demo version of “The Blood of Jesus” onto the record, our first official Cancer Christ release.

Since then, we’ve been pouring creative energy and sweat equity into Cancer Christ, and we’ve accomplished a ton of cool shit together. We’ve travelled, and made records, and art and a ton of friends along the way. We immediately sold out of the 12″ vinyl version of the record. If you can find one out there, you should definitely pick it up. It’s a super eclectic mix of really cool shit with narration by the great DJ Embryonic Petit Sac.

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