For those who don’t know or remember them, W.A.S.P. was easily one of the cooler acts of the hair metal movement in the ’80s. The band, whose name was rumored to be an acronym for We Are Sexual Perverts, were most notable for frontman Blackie Lawless sawing things in half with his buzzsaw codpiece (kids, don’t try this at home). Their biggest single, and the one that made them a lightning rod for puritans like Tipper Gore, was a song called “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast),” whose lyrics detailed all the bestial fucking your average metalhead dreamed of. That said, after he converted to Christianity, Lawless claimed he was over the song — but recent news suggests otherwise.
As reported by Loudwire, in a recent interview with Eddie Trunk’s SiriusXM show, Lawless confronted the idea of performing the track once more, and admitted it wasn’t the taboo scenario some might think.
“I don’t know,” admitted Lawless. “There’s a part of me that says it’s already out there. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Do I owe it to the fanbase to really make this a true retrospect of what we’ve done. If I had to give you an answer right now, I would say I’m leaning in the direction of doing it.”
However, Lawless also made it clear that it wasn’t just his faith that stopped him from performing the song recently, but his feeling that W.A.S.P. had other material they wanted to focus on: “We haven’t played that song in quite some time — it’s probably going on 15 years now. But however long it’s been, I think I made my point. So we’re in the process of… We’re discussing, let’s put it that way.”
Fans can catch W.A.S.P. live — and maybe hear the lyric “I FUCK LIKE A BEAST!” — at one of the shows on their 40th anniversary tour listed below:
