Since their arrival on the heavy metal scene in 1984, Gwar has been anything but shy.

Dave Brockie, the man behind the Oderus mask, purportedly smoked crack behind a dumpster with folks from the heavy metal magazine Decibel during an interview in 2010.

Maybe it’s true, maybe not — after almost 30 years of playing a man-beast with a cuttlefish phallus, Brockie and Oderus have become too intertwined to tell what’s what.

This weekend marks Gwar’s first appearance in Minneapolis since the death of guitarist Flattus Maximus, aka Cory Smoot, in 2011.

Smoot passed away in Gwar’s tour bus shortly after the band played at First Avenue. The coroner’s report declared that his death resulted from a pre-existing coronary artery disease.

“We all breathed a big sigh of relief when we found out it wasn’t a drug overdose, to speak quite frankly,” Brockie said in an interview with Loudwire.

Two years later, Oderus and his half-human bandmates are working harder than ever to annihilate humankind in Flattus’ honor.

I just read about an effort currently being made to get you guys on the Super Bowl halftime show. How do you feel about that?

Well, I think it’s obviously high time that there was a Super Bowl act that was worthy of the sport that the act goes with. I mean, come on, Black Eyed Peas, you know? Beyonce, Jay-Z, I mean, Bruno Mars? These people have nothing to do with football whatsoever. The only way I would support them being a part of the Super Bowl is if they were actually made to play football with no pads, all on one team, and if they just got the shit kicked out of ‘em.

I think that this petition for Gwar to play at the Super Bowl halftime show is basically a lot of people in America raising a collective middle finger to this entire process. The bigger we can get this thing, the bigger we can make that finger.

So does that mean you’d be willing to do it?

Oh, I mean, I’ve signed it already, sure. And if by some strange chance they actually said “Hell, Gwar, we want you to play the show,” of course we’d do it.

Why do you guys continue to play shows if your primary objective is to destroy and conquer?

Well that is why we play shows, my dear, to draw people into one place where they can easily be annihilated. If we had to track you down one by one, you know, into your bathrooms, into your places of work, into McDonald’s, you know, it would take forever.

So what we do is we put on shows that draw humans towards them and get like thousands and thousands of them in one spot under the guise of it being a heavy metal show, and then all the sudden they see their girlfriend has an ax to her head and is going ass cheeks first through a meat grinder, and at that point they’re having so much fun, they don’t really care.

So annihilation consists of particularly gruesome acts?

Oh yeah, I mean basically just to see Gwar is death. I mean, if you’re not actually killed by Gwar at the show, just the fact that you looked at us, by the time you get home, worms crawl out of your eyes and devour your genitals.

Huh. So, why do you guys want to conquer the human race?

Because we created you by [expletive] animals, especially apes, and we realize now that we made a huge mistake. Humans are so annoying. I mean, there’s occasionally pretty cool ones like Lemmy from Motorhead, for instance. So now we see the human race as a mistake that must be corrected, and the only way we can correct this mistake is by annihilating you, wiping you out and then I can try to create another perfect life form in order to create our Gwar army in which we can conquer the rest of the universe.

I mean, my plan to do that is to have sex with a living blue whale. I believe the seed transfer of Gwar in a blue whale will create a creature so horrible it will truly be worthy of being in Gwar’s army. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of blue whales — they swim really deep. I’ve had sex with a few dead blue whales, but that’s just not the same. So I’m constantly on a quest to find my ultimate lover.

You said you like someone from Motorhead — is there anyone else you feel particular love or affection for?

Well, if he’d been around in my lifetime, I’d say Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, he was a president, he lived in New York, he got shot and then he still made the parade and the speech before he went to the hospital. Now that’s good stuff.

I was very sorry to hear about the death of Flattus (aka Cory Smoot). How do you feel about returning to Minneapolis and to First Avenue specifically?

Well, it’s gonna be a heavy night, obviously. That was the last show he played. But in a way, I wouldn’t rather have it anywhere else because that venue has always been so very, very good to us, and we’ve always loved playing there so much. I know that they’re gonna understand how we feel that night, and I think it has the makings of a truly memorable, amazing, awesome Gwar show. It’s the perfect sendoff Flattus needs to send him back to the stars, and I know it’s a way for the people of Minneapolis to show their years of love and devotion to Flattus and Gwar. It wouldn’t be the same if we were playing in Boise, you know?

How difficult was it to keep going forward with the tour?

It was hard. Super hard. But the guys are superhuman chaos warriors from outer space, and we weren’t gonna let it stop us. In fact, almost immediately we seized upon the opportunity as a way to show to the world that no matter how crappy a card you are dealt, that you can actually use this as a way to prove dominance and mastery more than ever. Despite all the adversity, we found a way to rise above it, and I hope people take that as a lesson.

Far too many people take the sufferings of others, make them their own and use them as an excuse for their own pathetic, miserable lives to turn into [expletive], and we were absolutely not going to let that happen, and I hope in doing so that we made a fine example of ourselves to our fans.

So you do have a bit of a sentimental side?

Well, I would never admit it, but I guess I just did.

How do you guys prep for tour?

It’s every bit as chaotic as ever. We’ve spent the last year and a half or so working on this record. Then we basically conjure up all the props, costumes, uh, the slaves who work months upon months to get everything together, and now we’re finally at the stage where we actually move everything over to the warehouse here, down to the basement of the slave pit and actually do dress rehearsals, believe it or not. They’re chaotic affairs with lots of people yelling at each other, and generally speaking, it takes about the first week of the freaking tour to get things sorted out. But when finally the shows start to click, it’s really an amazing experience. Once again, it’ll be part rock concert, part Shakespearean tragedy and all a tribute to Flattus.

Read Gwar’s guest Dr. Date column here.

What: Gwar with Whitechapel, Iron Reagan and A Band of Orcs

Where: First Avenue, 701 N. First Ave., Minneapolis

When: Saturday, 5 p.m.

Cost: $20 in advance, $23 at the door