Metal
Chuck Varga, a founding member of GWAR and its Sexecutioner from 1985 to 2022, has died of cancer at 68. Bassist Casey Orr, the band’s Beefcake the Mighty, announced it on Friday night in a post 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 pictures him being welcomed into Valhalla by Dave Brockie — the singer behind Oderus Urungus, who died in March 2014 — and guitarist Cory Smoot, and signs off: “Raise your glass and tell his tales. Legends never die.”
Varga co-founded the Slave Pit collective in Richmond and worked on GWAR from its earliest days across sculpture, illustration, character design and special effects. Onstage he was the Sexecutioner, and he kept the part for thirty-seven years: from the first night in 1985 to the last in 2022. He sang on the song of that name on 1990’s “Scumdogs of the Universe” and on “Rag Na Rok” from 1995’s “Ragnarök”.
The band revealed in April that Varga had cancer and organised a blood drive in his honour. In June it opened a fundraiser to cover his treatment, hospice care, medical equipment and nursing, along with the rent on his Brooklyn apartment while his wife stepped away from work to care for him. Bob Gorman, GWAR’s Bonesnapper, wrote at the time that Varga’s “illustrations, character designs, performances, and artistic vision can still be felt throughout GWAR today”.
GWAR begin a North American tour this October with Midnight and Mac Sabbath.
Text by Roger Estivill