Chuck Varga, a founding member of GWAR and the man who played The Sexecutioner from 1985 until 2022, has died after a battle with cancer.
The news was announced on the night of Friday, September 25 by Casey Orr — Beefcake The Mighty to anyone who has ever stood in the splash zone — in a post shared on social media.
"Chuck Varga has left this earthly realm. He passed peacefully, his beloved wife Bambi holding his hand," Orr wrote. "He was one of a kind. As an artist, as a performer; as a scholar and a gentleman. I'm better for having known him and the world is lesser for his leaving."
Orr closed by placing Varga among the band's long roll of the fallen. "He is most likely being welcomed into Valhalla right now by [Dave] Brockie and Smooty [guitarist Cory Smoot] and all who went before. Raise your glass and tell his tales. Legends never die. Hail Varga! Hail Sexecutioner!"
Varga's illness had been public since June, when GWAR opened a fundraiser to cover the mounting cost of his cancer treatment, hospice care, specialised medical equipment and additional nursing support. The campaign was also meant to keep his Brooklyn apartment going while Bambi stepped away from her own work to care for him full time.
The Sexecutioner was never a musician's role, and that is precisely the point. GWAR is not only a band — it is the Slave Pit, the Richmond, Virginia art collective that has been building costumes, characters, props and an entire mythology for more than forty years. Varga was there at the start of it, and he was one of the people who decided what the thing would look like. He drew it, designed it, built it, and then went out and performed the results in front of audiences who were about to be drenched in fake blood.
"Chuck Varga's contributions to the GWAR and Slave Pit collective are enormous," Bob Gorman — Bonesnapper — said when the fundraiser launched in June. "The influence of his illustrations, character designs, performances, and artistic vision can still be felt throughout GWAR today. Chuck's over-the-top underground art aesthetic helped define an entire universe and inspired generations of artists and fans around the world. His legacy will remain with us forever."
He held the part for thirty-seven years before stepping away in 2022.
GWAR has buried too many of its own. Guitarist Cory Smoot, who performed as Flattus Maximus, died in 2011. Frontman Dave Brockie — Oderus Urungus, the voice and the face of the band for three decades — was found dead at his Richmond home in March 2014 at the age of 50; Virginia's State Medical Examiner's Office ruled the cause as acute heroin toxicity by accidental means.
The band goes on, as it always has, on the stated principle that the Scumdogs of the Universe cannot be killed by anything as ordinary as death. That is a much easier thing to put in a press release than to live with.