Catch just a couple minutes of Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse – and the show’s blackened, bloodied heart, fictional death metal band Dethklok – and you might (understandably) suspect that series creator Brendon Small has taken direct aim at the ripe-for-satire death metal culture. You might suspect that – but you’d be wrong. The Underwire recently spoke with Small about Dethklok, what makes them shred so brutally, and why Metalocalypse is actually mocking grown-up babies:
“Our show is about making fun of celebrityism,” says Small. “We really love metal and we love this world.” Celebrities, as Small describes it, are “basically a bunch of grown-up babies,” an opinion deftly illustrated (no pun intended, har har) when Dethklok accidentally chops their personal chef to pieces, only to realize that not a single member of the band knows how to cook. The solution? Stitch the poor chef back together so that his gruesome, googly-eyed, re-animated body can cook for them.
And celebrities beware – since debuting on Cartoon Network’s late-night sister network, the Metalocalypse monster has transformed Dethklok from animated TV star to real-life chart-topper to even-more-real-life stage act that, starting today, will embark on a college tour with …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (Dethklok's set, which Small describes as a "big, stupid Disney ride," will feature live music intertwined with animated comedy sketches). You can’t fault Small, who voices three of the band’s five characters and clearly delights in Dethklok’s musical success, for enjoying the ride – since graduating from the Berklee College of Music, he has worked hard to combine his musical and TV projects, from scores for Adult Swim’s Home Movies (RIP) to the full-fledged album born of Metalocalypse.
Fortunately for metal fans, Small also works hard on the gore - and Metalocalypse includes lots and lots of gore, from beheadings to squishings to torture scenes that involved eyeballs being plucked from sockets. Small’s response? “We’re talking about a death metal band.” (Fair enough.) “There is no threshold, we go as far as we can.”
When I mention Dethklok’s place in history as the highest-charting death metal band ever (true story), Small becomes a fanboy himself: “The other thing about the album’s success is the world of metal is different from emo and indie rock. The fans are really, really loyal.” One look at Dethklok’s MySpace profile reveals comments that sound eerily like those fictional fans make on the show. Italian teenager ZOMG RaWRzaRD ZOMG offered: “w00t dethklok ownssss dethalbum pwns awsome job on the new season to -keep it brutal.” But do these fans get the (sort-of) joke? Small, for his part, thinks they’re quite savvy - in fact, he suspects that these real-world fans are starting to imitate their virtual counterparts.
String it together and that's an animated show about a fictional band that released a real-world CD that actually climbed Billboard charts and is now going on tour with a non-virtual band – all of which is being supported by fans that are imitating their on-show equivalents.
Whoa, dude. So. meta(l).
Trail of Dead/Dethklok Tour:
10/29/07: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.
10/31/07: University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.
11/01/07: University of California, Los Angeles, Calif.
11/02/07: University of California, Berkley, Calif..
11/05/07: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.
11/07/07: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
11/08/07: University of South Dakota, Vermillian, S.D.
11/11/07: University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.
11/13/07: Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Ill.
11/14/07: University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis
11/17/07: University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
11/18/07: Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.
