Words: Christian Crider

Dethklok is the fictional death metal band at the center of the warped reality set in the world of Metalocalypse – the hit animated series on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Now, show creator Brendon Small is in the midst of a summer tour bringing Dethklok to the stage, and to audiences considerably more real than the band.

“Our live show is simple,” says Small. “My initial thought was, 'I want to make this feel like a big, stupid Disney ride, but with murder.' And that’s what I’m going for. I want to tell a little bit of story. I want to get the audience involved. I want it to be fun for guys who like their metal, and are very excited about metal, and I want it to be something that people who don’t know anything about metal, or in fact may be scared by metal, will still enjoy. So it should be a fun ride. And it’s basically a gigantic movie screen playing above Dethklok, I’m in this band with three other musicians and we’re supposed to be a pit orchestra to the show that is above us, which is the animation.”

Bringing the doom of Dethklok to the stage presents huge challenges rarely faced by musical acts (aside from Gorillaz). When asked what difficulties he has encountered in taking Detklok on tour, Small was meek yet confident.

“For me, it’s just been rehearsing guitar parts and playing and singing at the same time,” he says. “I had an idea for a little bit of a story – just enough story to hang your hat on. And then I talked to a couple of the directors who work on this show and I said, ‘Hey, let’s start putting videos together for these songs. What would “Murmaider” look like? What would be the continuation of “Thunderhorse?”’ And we just sat together and started thinking about these things, and the guys just storyboarded stuff, and we checked in every day. All this stuff is really fun to do – it’s just that at some point you have to make sure you have enough budget and time. I guess that’s the most difficult thing. This isn’t the kind of band that can go out and start playing at a local club, you have to have a presentation, so you have to talk a lot of people into giving you lots of money. That’s been my forte with the whole Dethklok thing, talking people into opening up their purses so I can take money and be creative with it. And, again, playing guitar live. I feel comfortable with that now, but I’ve been rehearsing for, like, a year for this.”

Small has enlisted a crack team of musicians to bring Dethklok to the masses. Metal drummer Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel/Unearth), guitarist Mike Keneally (Frank Zappa) and bassist Bryan Beller (Steve Vai) have joined the lineup, each bringing his own vast array of experience to the table. Small is quick to sing the praises of these musicians and their contributions to the live experiences, but emphasizes the true direction of the band.

“My whole M.O. was: Let’s not make it about us,” says the ringleader. “Let’s make it about Dethklok. Let’s not embarrass people by trying to dress up like the band. I’m just not interested in that. Wait for the Icecapades show, when I really sell out. In the meantime, I want to make sure these guys are just solid.  My prerequisites for anyone I want to work with is that they have to be incredibly talented, incredibly relaxed, and have a good sense of humor. And that’s what all these guys have. Plus it turns out that they’re all virtuoso musicians.”

Metalocalypse is the product of a collection of tastes Small has acquired over the years. Whether shredding on his guitar in college, or rediscovering his roots years later, he has proven himself a competent and creative musician.

“I like rock guitar, I like shred guitar. I’m in it for the grandiosity of it … playing the kind of guitar I wanted to play was desperately uncool around the time I got good at playing,” he says. “I was working at a movie theater and all I cared about was movies and plot structure and character. I started doing stand-up and put my guitar away for a while. And then in Small's previous animated series Home Movies I was rediscovering my guitar after a few years off, and getting excited about it again. Meanwhile, as I was doing Home Movies I was rediscovering metal, and kind of getting back into this stuff that was a guilty pleasure. I always wanted to do a project that was just a music project, and the time was right for Dethklok. I had never really written death metal stuff before – I had been into Metallica and Slayer and all that stuff. While I was in music school, we were doing everything but metal. I grew up playing metal, so it was fun to reacquaint myself with that stuff and develop what Dethklok was going to sound like. That was part of the development process for me. I spent three months off trying to figure out what the band was going to sound like.”

In their cartoon forms, Dethklok preside over a dark and dangerous world where sudden and often gory deaths are commonplace. While on the surface their behavior may seem rash, hedonistic, or – one might suggest – nihilistic, Small insists there is a deeper satirical meaning behind the chaos that is Dethklok.

“Our show is about celebrityism and what we try to do is reflect what’s going on in the world of celebrities,” he reasons. “The last decade of TV and entertainment has kind of devolved into, ‘What is the celebrity doing? How does that affect me?’ All that stuff – and that’s basically what we’re trying to do. If that ends up being nihilism … we’re not necessarily trying to go for that. We’re showing that this particular band and/or the celebrities we’re choosing to showcase and satirize are narcissistic, self-obsessed people, which I think contradicts nihilism in some ways.”

Dethklok plays Orlando's Hard Rock Live June 30, and St. Petersburg's Jannus Landing July 1.

dethklok.org