‘Intergalactic’ metal band GWAR has its own Virginia whiskey arriving this week

Behold: The might of GWAR is now alcoholic.

Ragnarök Rye is fire and it is whiskey. It is blood magic. It is overproof rye with the terrifying flavors of... delicate sugar maple? And cherrywood?

Yes, GWAR has a whiskey now. On May 28, the charred-wood taste of the Richmond metal band will be released to the world in rye whiskey form, delivered unto the all-powerful masters of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission by Virginia’s Catoctin Creek Distilling. It’ll likely sell out the day it’s released.

Depending on who you listen to, GWAR might be an ever-changing and costumed menagerie of theatrical shock rockers who’ve been based in Virginia since the ‘80s — internationally known axe grinders who call themselves names like Pustulus Maximus and Balsac The Jaws of Death. The band’s famously gory shows involve shoving fans into fake meat grinders and spraying enough corn syrup “blood” to paint a barn.

But if you believe the press materials released by both the band and Catoctin Creek, GWAR is instead a group of alien comet-riding instigators of Viking Armageddon. They are warriors who spilled their blood into an ancient caldera — blood they harvested from its smoldering surface to use as sacramental firewater before a battle.

This ancient blood of gods was distilled and aged in barrels that GWAR then “hurled into the orbit of the moon.” The Ragnarök Rye then “spun under the influence of the deathly coldness of space and the life-giving heat of the sun.”

But in more mundane terms, said Catoctin Creek co-owner Scott Harris, GWAR is also just a bunch of whiskey fans, bourbon and scotch in particular. They also run their own bar in Richmond. Harris said the band first approached his Loudoun County distillery last year.

“They kind of reached out and said, ‘Hey, we want to get our own whiskey,’” Harris said.

As it turns out, the 12-year-old distillery — the first in Loudoun County since Prohibition — was game to make them one.

Catoctin’s co-owner and distiller Becky Harris figured the band would want powerful and unique flavors, something in keeping with their extreme image. She had already been playing with various finishing woods the distillery could use to flavor Catoctin’s existing whiskies, such as their flagship Roundstone Rye — including exotic and distinctive varieties, such as cypress.

She had the band taste 10, and the Harrises were surprised to discover GWAR had refined and somewhat patriotic tastes. The band near-unanimously preferred the depth and balance of sugar maple and cherrywood, which had the added benefit of being Virginia-native trees.

“I actually liked some of the cypress and some of the really wacky ones,” Harris said. “But the band really honed in on that one.”

The process of pulling together the Ragnarök Rye took a little longer than expected. It was originally due in February. Officially, the stated reason was that “the monster metal rock band drank it ... all of it.”

But the delay had a lot more to do with the bottle tops. GWAR had sent out designs for the collectible tops of the bottles, which had to be custom-made. The caps come in five varieties, one for each band member.

“The bar tops are super collectible, and everybody’s really going crazy about them. But they take time to make because they’re not made in a mass production facility,” Harris said. “There’s an artist in California that’s making these. So it takes time, and it’s expensive.”

It’s also expensive to put the bottles together because the goofy shapes make it so the process can’t easily be automated. And so the initial run of 1,000 GWAR bottles was delayed to May 28.

Half the whiskey will be sold in Virginia, half everywhere else. Harris expects the in-state whiskey to sell out the same day it goes on sale — and he’s received intense metalhead inquiries from as far away as Australia.

Catoctin plans to make more Ragnarök after the first batch. But again, it’ll take time.

As for what it tastes like? The small sample we tested is indeed more fun, balanced, and flavorful than the basic rye from Catoctin. The expert tasters in GWAR weren’t wrong in their selection.

We brought it to a couple of local cocktail experts and one seasoned taster got a whiff of plum in the nose. Another got “dehydrated pineapple” and perhaps “concentrated wine” flavors and said it was among the better Virginia whiskies he’d tasted. Both tasters also said the whiskey tasted very young.

In a video review punctuated by guttural outbursts from band member Jizmak the Gusha, bourbon critic Fred Minnick congratulated Catoctin on the rye’s smoky “barbecue” flavor and said the whiskey might convert a Scotch drinker to bourbon.

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“It’s the second-best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth!” declared the Gusha, who promised that drinking a whole bottle would make you the band’s slave.

Perhaps.

But note that Ragnarök is not as aged and complex as you’d generally expect from a whiskey in its hefty $100 price range. Those collectible metal bar tops, and the rye’s small-batch production, make Ragnarök an apocalyptically high-priced dram among 3-year ryes. But it does heartily back up its status as a special-edition Catoctin.

Harris said that with the end of the pandemic, he’s personally looking forward to finally being able to attend a GWAR show. He has not yet done so.

“All of my employees are just dying to go to a GWAR show when they get back up and going,” Harris said. “They’ve volunteered to be the ones to go on stage and be thrown in the meat grinder.”

Ragnarök Rye will be released 8 a.m. Friday at ABC stores and on Catoctin Creek’s website at catoctincreekdistilling.com. Each bottle comes with a randomly selected collectible metal bar top and costs $99.95.

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com.