Chuck Varga, who founded GWAR and stood inside The Sexecutioner from 1985 until 2022, has died after a battle with cancer. Casey Orr, the band's bassist and the man behind Beefcake The Mighty, announced it in a post on Friday night, 25 September.
“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 ended where the band's own mythology would end it, saying Varga was most likely being welcomed into Valhalla by Dave Brockie, who fronted GWAR as Oderus Urungus until his death in 2014.
Thirty seven years is longer than most bands last, and Varga spent them inside a costume, which is the part of GWAR that is easy to laugh at and hard to do. The Sexecutioner was there from the beginning, in the years when the band were art students in Richmond building monsters out of foam rubber, and he was still there when they were a touring institution. He stepped away from the role in 2022.