We’re Cold Slither… and a Fatal Fluffy, too

2025/12/192025/12/19 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

I wanted to make this costume as soon as I heard the Cold Slither song “These Fluffies are Fatal.” Unfortunately for the SDCC crowd, I was already too busy putting together the band’s costumes. I promised the Hasbro crew, however, that if we got to play again, I would definitely trot out this silly character from the G.I. Joe cartoon for the show. And I did.

Fatal Fluffy with Sgt. Slaughter — And I eventually got put in a cobra clutch by Sgt. Slaughter

With no budget to speak of beyond my own wallet, I was limited. But, having been in Ghoul and always working without a budget, I was resourceful! Continue reading “We’re Cold Slither… and a Fatal Fluffy, too” →

We’re Cold Slither part 2

2025/12/162025/12/16 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

In my previous posting, I detailed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I had to be in the band Cold Slither and become a real-life part of G.I. Joe, my favorite toyline of all time. Well, turns out it was more than a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because we got to take a bite out of the Big Apple last October.

I knew before we played at San Diego Comic Con the previous July that there was a Cold Slither comic coming out in October. New York City Comic Con was in October. If we didn’t fuck up our initial appearance, I figured it was a shoe in that we would play in New York. Well, even before we left the backstage in San Diego, the Hasbro crew were like “so, we heard you’ll be with us in New York.” Can I get a “hell yeah.”

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We’re Cold Slither part 1

2025/12/152025/12/15 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Towards the end of January, 2024, I got a call from Gus Rios of Gruesome and Left to Die. I didn’t answer the phone, however, as I was busy at work. I was like, I’ll call Gus later. It can’t be important, we’re not in a band together, but sometimes we chat about toys. Whatever new G.I. Joe thing is coming out, he can tell me about it later. Then I get text from Matt Harvey who is a bandmate to both me and Gus. Matt’s is insistent that I call Gus back immediately. It’s urgent. So I do… and Gus does want to talk about a new G.I. Joe thing coming out. And the new thing is us. We’re going to be the band from the G.I. Joe cartoon. We’re going to be Cold Slither.

In some backroom deal with Tomax and Xamot, Gerardo at Reigning Phoenix Music had gotten the rights to create Cold Slither in real life and to put out an album. Gerardo, also a toy collector, had called his old friend Gus, knowing that Gus had expressed an interest in doing Cold Slither as a real band. Hell, he and I had talked about it in 2020, but I thought it was more of a lark: a pipe dream. Now Gus, with a little bit of help from Matt, had the deal to write and record an actual album. And we were going to play San Diego Comic-Con. And it was all based around the release of a new toy showcasing the band. And it’s official. We’re toys. Continue reading “We’re Cold Slither part 1” →

Who Wants Some Head

2024/05/17 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Sebastian from Exhumed was getting pretty tired of the same old spark guitar gag he was doing for the Exhumed set over the last few years. For our Decayed Decades tour, Matt suggested we bring back an old gag, the guillotine. Sebastian would solo, then Dr. Philthy would come out and behead him. Exhumed had done the guillotine bit with Bud, the old guitar player, years ago, but that severed head looked REALLY bad. I offered to make something a little bit better for Sebastian.

I had very little time to get this together between tours, so it was definitely done under a crunch. And there were a few missteps on the way to making this…

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Fixing Latex Clothing

2023/01/282023/01/28 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Kind of an odd post for this blog, but music often includes theater and theater includes costumes. On the last Exhumed tour in 2022, I was fortunate enough to have my lovely girlfriend accompany us for three shows. At the last minute, our guitarist Baz remembered a photo shoot I had done with her featuring my teal “sexy nurse” GB-4 bass and my girlfriend in a sexy latex nurse costume she had from before we met. It just HAPPENED to be the exact same colors. I call it kismet. Anyway, he suggested we invite her on stage with us to perform with us and our own inimitable Dr. Philthy! It was a grand idea and she assented.

Latex clothing is a tricky beast. It needs to be tight but this can also make it difficult to put on. It doesn’t slide on like normal cotton, it’s got tack to it when applied to skin. While getting ready before our show in Philadelphia at Johnny Brenda’s, we moved a little too fast and undid some of the seams on the collar of the dress. The seams are glued, not sewn (obviously) and we were lucky we didn’t actually rip the latex. Also of some luck, our direct support had red duct tape that matched the collar’s piping so I was able to make a quick fix for the night and the show went on. This dress wasn’t cheap, though, so we needed to do a REAL fix. So, I learned how to fix latex clothing.

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DIY Spew Tanks

2018/03/13 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

So you want to spew like the pros. Or, at the very least, the idiots in our band. Before our last tour with GWAR, we rejiggered our entire system of blood delivery. Based on a system devised by Sean, I made a revised version of a self contained blood tank that could send pressurized spew to the wanting masses.

Sean first got the idea to use plastic pipes for self-contained blood spewing some years back. It involved sealing and pressurizing plastic tubes with common Schraeder bike pump valves. Everything was customized for each individual costume, though, and require fragile gravity feeds. Years later, I came up with this diagram after thinking about how a spray bottle worked:

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Blood of Docs – Building Doctor Jones

2018/01/152018/01/15 Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

In my last post about building a costume, I detailed fleshing out a character from our mythos. For our last tour, however, we also added a character for the beginning of the set to introduce the narrative. Like any beginning of a set for a blood-spewing band, we needed a character to kill and come out spewing to capture our audience in the whirlwind of gore to come. Introducing, and then sending to his final resting place, Doctor Jones.

Photos by Johnny Perilla from nextmosh.com

Since we were out with GWAR, a decapitation was out of the question. That’s practically a trademark of theirs. But I wanted something splashy, so I settled on ripping someone’s face off. This was only my second two-part mask mold, but it went infinitely easier than the first.

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Blood of Dogs – Building Sgt. Rott

2018/01/02 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

A new part of the mythos for our band since our last record has been the addition of dog soldiers to back up the big bad guy. Well, they’re on the record and on the record cover, but it took us the better part of a year to make ’em. Sean built one and I did the other. You wanna know how Sean built his? Tell him to write a blog. You wanna meet Sgt. Rott? Here he is.

Sgt. Rott was played by our buddy Muddy when he joined the second half of our long-assed tour with GWAR in 2017. Sean’s dog solder, Lt. Collie, was there the whole time. Because that’s how a hierarchy works.

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