Dethklok – Death Is Only The Begining
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dethklok, a fictional band, created by the imagination of one demented American guy called Brendon Small, who just wanted to play his own brand of metal. Dethklok band members are: Pickles the Drummer on drums, William Murderface on bass, the fastest guitarist alive Skwisgaar Skwigelf, the second fastest guitarist alive Toki Wartooth and Nathan Explosion on grunts. Their goal is to play the blackest of the black, most brutal and darkest metal ever created.
On top of that, they are the stars of their own animated cartoon show called Metalocalypse, which turned into such a huge success that it forced the creation of Dethklok's first official album, named "The Dethalbum", also featuring the talent of non-other than Gene Hoglan (Death, Strapping Young Lad), drummer extraordinaire, who also participated in Dethklok's official tour. Just before Metalocalypses' second season continues and because Dethklok is the greatest band ever, we spoke with its mastermind, and also caught up with two Dethklok members who agreed to share their brutality with us. You may now go die.
Hey Brendon, Let's first start with the show. Metalocalypse has been on a break for some time now, was it because of the writers strike or was it something else that kept you from doing new episodes? When can we expect the show to return?
I'll tell you exactly what happened. The whole season got screwed up because the sales and marketing departments decided to plan a tour in the middle of last fall – we did 3 weeks of this tryout tour, of Dethklok live, and that was successful – but they planed it right in the middle of our season so we had to take about 3 or 4 months off of production to make this tour, and basically we had to stop production for the TV show, to accommodate the live tour part. It was bad timing, but the tour was good, and we're going to do more touring because it was successful.
We're not part of the writer's guild, I'm not a writer's guild member and since it doesn't cover animation, it doesn't effect me as a writer. I'm writing right now, and we're finishing up the second season. It's going to re-launch on April 6, and you're going to see 20 episodes. We're going to start with couple of the first ones, those that we previewed in early fall, and then we're going to keep running through the entire season. We're going to have a whole bunch of back-to-back episodes, and a lot of brand new stuff.
How did the tour go for you, and do you have any future plans for more tours or maybe even a European invasion?
I would love to do that. Right now what we're trying to do is plan a tour, I don't know exactly what the details yet, but I think it's going to happen very soon. We're finalizing the details of an early summer tour, where Dethklok would be headlining. We don't know who the other bands are, but I think we got many cool metal bands that want to go on tour with us.
Basically, the tour itself was great, I was very happy with the actual live show and the musicians I got to play with [Besides Brendon Small – Vocals / Guiter and Gene Hoglan – Drums, there's Mike Keneally – Guitar and Bryan Beller – Bass – O.M.]. The tour is an animated tour, we project the show on a gigantic movie screen style, and we're playing the picture. The show is not so much about the people on stage, it's about the visual behind us, and everything really ends up hooking up together very nicely and it has humor in it, and darkness with comedy. I think it turned out pretty cool.
So basically people don't see you, and there's a big screen in front of them instead?
Yes… [Laughs]… Basically we're on stage, if you really want to look hard, you can see us, but the show is not about me being on stage, it's about the movie screen above us. It's not like us saying that we are Dethklok – we are making the music for Dethklok and we're supposed to sound like Dethklok but we are not supposed to be Dethklok. Dethklok is an animation form above us.
For those who are still not hooked up on the show, can you tell us in short about what brought you to make it, and what is it about?
The show is basically about an extreme death metal band called Dethklok and it's the biggest entertainment act in the world. The way that I pictured it is that I wanted to do a show about this band – a death metal band – which is the biggest entertainment act in the world, and there would be a lot of murder, but its funny, its slapstick [a type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence or activities]… its classic slapstick comedy.
Basically this show has a lot of metal in it, a lot of guitars. If you're a music geek, if you like guitars and gear, you're going to see a lot of that stuff on the show. Ultimately the show is about "celebrity-izem" and how it's getting out of control in the US. That's what the show is about, a bunch of people who can't really do anything for themselves, they are brilliantly talented when it comes to music but they can't tie their own shoes.
What brought me to make it? I had a different show that was very different from this, but on the same network, and I wrote the music for that and the script and I did voices, but that show really never found its audience, although we were very proud of it and we liked the show a lot. So we already knew how to write music and comedy, and do voice-over, but I couldn't do a real music project out of it.
I didn't think that anybody would be interested in doing thing that I was excited about, and I was really excited about metal, how much heavier it got over the last 10 years, and how people are really playing their instruments and there's a lot of virtuosos out there. I was writing really cool metal, and wanted to show it to everybody, that was the goal of the show, so the network were into it. It's a very bizarre show with a lot of strange and very specific things going on, but the network supported us.
It's not completely clear if the show is meant as a parody of metal clichés, or a celebration of them, which one is it?
I guess it's up to you to make up. For me, when I'm writing, I don't think metal is funny, I'm kind of sick of people making fun of anything that takes itself seriously, I'm very sick of ironic comedy, in fact, I think it's the worst form of comedy, when people just point at something and laugh, rather than doing work and making jokes and coming up with ideas. I hate ironic comedy, I think its one notch of pun here in America, and it's got to go away. I celebrate metal, I really do, I like when people do their jobs really well, and there are very few people who do it, but in the metal world, they are the only people who do their jobs.
So we take stories that are happening in the world, not just in metal but in all types of music. For example, we take the idea that the new Guns N' Roses record is taking 11 million dollars and 9 years to do – we take those kind of stories and turn them into something else. We're making fun of the music industry in a lot of ways. But ultimately our jokes are about "celebrity-izem", about people who can't really do anything and the surely stupid fascination about them here in the US.
It is known that there are many dislikes and differences between European and American metal, if it’s by bands or by fans, but on Metalocalypse there are plenty of references to both cultures… Was it something intentional you wanted to do on the show?
I don't know. There are a lot of different styles of music out there, and its kind of fun to represent all of them. You know there's so many different sub-genres of metal but I've seen a lot of people been influenced by each other, I've seen a lot of Scandinavian bands influenced by American bands and vice versa, everything kind of comes together someway. I'm a fan of all that stuff, I love Slayer, I love Amon Amarth, so why not put them all in the same place? I like bands that do hard rock at times, and some bands that are really scary and heavy like Cannibal Corps or Arch Enemy, and things like that.
Speaking of Cannibal Corpse, It is well known that Nathan Explosion was inspired by none other than their vocalist, George Fisher…
We've basically based the look of Nathan Explosion on George Fisher. I don't believe George Fisher behaves like Nathan, I think he is much smarter than Nathan Explosion.
Maybe, but many saw the video of him talking about World of Warcraft in this Nathan Explosion sort of way… blowing people, fuck the alliance and all that.
Yeah… [Laughs]… That is something I actually still have not seen, so I can't say that we were influenced by that anyway. I do know George, and the way that he fronts a band is what we really wanted to do, because he is undeniably a really great front man. Everything else about Nathan is much sillier than what I think George is – I think George is a regular guy, very smart and funny, and Nathan Explosion is his absurd equal but in parts of stupid celebrity.
Were the other band members inspired by metalhead stereotypes or some combinations of band members that you've seen?
They were not influences by anyone in particular. You know, we play music and we meet people and you start kind of see things, like the Bass players in metal, they're not much prominent, you can't really hear the bass that much on a record, so we gave William Murderface an inferiority complex, he hates himself because he is never heard and always overcompensating, so the character started developing from that.
Then we decided to have 2 guitar players in the band, and there's always a clashing of egos when there's two guitar players. So one of them is from Sweden, and has this really arrogant attitude, like how Yngwie Malmsteen comes across at interviews in times, which I love and I would not want him to change, because I love his attitude and his bravado. So I believe there's a little bit of Yngwie Malmsteen in Skwisgaar, and that's how we treat him and how he makes decisions.
Then with Toki Wartooth we were going like, ok Skwisgaar is blonde, and for the other guitar player we should have a different colored hair, and we just started coming up with those guys. Oh, and Pickles the Drummer, who has so many different kinds of things that we settled on when we were running out of time, and made him this western metalhead.
On the show you had such guests as Warrel Dane of Nevermore, King Diamond and even the mighty Emperor. How did you manage to bring such names to contribute and who where the most fun people to work with?
I think everyone we got to work with was really great, they all had a really great sense of humor. In addition of being very dark and experienced musicians they were professional and good actors. All these guys really surprised me. King Diamond of course was one of my favorites to work with because I've been a fan of him forever, he is a great storyteller, he created voices, characters, and he is one of the nicest coolest guys I have ever talked to. Also Metallica has been on the show and they are really great. Its funny but we got a good performance out of everyone that we worked with. I think it shows that in the music world they appreciate comedy to a great degree, and I think that in the comedy world they appreciate music a lot. It kind of goes hand in hand, and the musicians like the idea of doing something other than what they usually do.
Any chance you can share some more names that might make an appearances in the future, or just tell me that Angela Gossow [Arch Enemy] will be someone's girlfriend?
We're talking about all that stuff right now. I don't know exactly what going to be final, anything can happen, episodes can re-cut or re-edited and have different things in them, so all I can say is stay tuned. But we do have a lot of great people coming out on the show that I'm very excited about and there's some really great acting work by some of our metal heroes. You'll have to wait and see.
Let's get to the Dethalbum… What can you tell us about the recording session, and how was working with such legend as Gene Hoglan?
Gene was great and amazing, he was everything I could have hoped for and very much more, incredibly relaxed and intelligent. Musically he approaches everything, not just from the stand point that he can do, but also from music stand point – like what would make sense in the song. A lot of stuff was very instinct based, we didn't think about them too much… I had a lot of these songs already written, from the show, and my job was to organize them and do a longer form. Then I would show Gene the drum parts I have programmed and we would go from there.
At first, I have recorded a song for what would end being on the European version of the "Saw III" soundtrack and I had a deadline. That was the first time me and Gene recorded together a song. It was called "Hatredcopter" and we did it in one day. After that we said: "hey wow, we never worked together before, we did the song and it turned out pretty cool." It was pretty good for two guys who never played before, and we both liked the song a lot. I liked the song so much that I wanted it not to be by Dethklok but by Me, that I will use later on something, but I figured it could be a cool Dethklok song so I put it on the record.
Concept wise, it was 3 guys… There was me, Gene, and Ulrich Wild, who co-produced the record with me. He has worked with Pantera, White Zombie and I love the way he does the drum sound, in edition to be a cool and funny guy. For me, when I hire people to work with me, I like them to be really funny and cool but no drama queens or anything. I like them to be people I can hang out with. Same goes for the people I work with on the show. So that was pretty tedious process because I was basically playing all instruments by myself – because I can – and I had to come up with ideas for everything. It was pretty exhausting, but I was happy to do it, it was a lot of fun for me.
When you made the songs on the show, did you think of making full versions later or were they already complete songs which you only played parts off?
The songs were almost the exact length as they appear on the show, so sometimes there would be 30 seconds and fade out. But my initial plan from the beginning of the show was to do a record. TV shows can get cancelled, TV shows cost a lot of money to make per episode, and it costs as much as one episode of the show to produce a record. But I know you can get a lot of miles with a record, and the show could exist in audio form, so I wanted to see how much I can drain from just a TV show and of course it's a show about a band so it makes sense to do a record. I think that on the second season it's pretty much the same, all the music I make on the show I demo record what would become a longer song, with a beginning and end.
Are there already plans to make a follow up to The Dethalbum or is it something we'll need to wait for a little longer?
There are plans. We are talking about it right now, but basically I have to finish this season, to go on tour, and then I can go and make a record. So its all in the works right now. The first record was really big success for us, we sold a lot of copies and it was well received so we have to be crazy not to do a second one. There's a lot of music in the second season. It will be kind of like the first record, we'll take a lot of music from the second season and some stuff we didn't get to on first season and then some other stuff.
Since Metalocalypse popularity has grown, do you think that in the future the show will be bigger visually, with longer episodes, or you will keep it in the current format?
We are experimenting right now. The current format is short but we're going to do one experiment this season. I won't tell you what it is… but there's going to be a longer episode and we'll see how we go through there. Personally I want to go into much bigger format, go to film, and do a movie with a big story to tell, with bigger cinematic, that would be very exciting and funny.
Ok thanks Brendon, now I have some questions for Dethklok members… Nathan, if you had to describe Dethklok to someone, what he would say?
[…Nathan looks at me for a really long time… Then, he walks out of the room and slams the door…]
Ok, so maybe something else… What are Dethklok goals as a band?
Nathan Explosion: Financial goals… we have a big overhead and it costs a lot of money to keep the electricity running in Mordhaus… there's that and there's goals for any metal band… fucking play metal… yeah, be loud and play rock n' roll!
Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy is very brutal for a female… What is Dethklok's take on her?
Nathan Explosion: She's hot… We would like to be in a dark room with her alone, just the five of us… and Angela.
What inspires you to write such brutal songs?
Nathan Explosion: Internet bloggers… Fat internet dorks who write crappy reviews… that inspires a lot of hatred… horror films of the 1970's… eating Pizza before you go to bed, you get a lot of nightmares, so I remember that stuff and write it down.
Skwisgaar, it's been said you are the fastest guitarist alive, but does it mean that there is someone faster than you who is not alive?
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: [Laughs]… thats coulds very much be true… thats is a dead persons whos fasters than me… Buts on seconds you gets fasters thans me, you justs ends dyings anyways… So yours hand probably explode and fallses off…
I'm sures theres are fasters guy outs there thans me… heres and theres… and if thats whats yours needs to gets through the days to challenge me or trys to beats me thens go aheads… I feels sorry for yours, thats yours needs to challenge the great guitarists alive, and trys to gets through yours days.
Have you heard about Herman Li of Dragonforce?
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Ya…
What do you think of him?
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Pretties fasts… Wilds note… I woulds likes to play with hims ones days… and sees whats happen… getting ins the rooms with hims, and sees whos get "the pits" first… I can'ts complains… I likes guyses thats are shredding, I'm not competitives with others guitars players outs theres… I thinks theres should be mores peoples plays mores note in the smallests amounts of times… I wants to keeps that alives so I donts want to challenge everyones… So Hermans Li… keeps on going… Yngwies Malmsteen… keeps on going.
Nathan, Israel is a very brutal place… Is there any chance that Dethklok will come here and share their brutality with us?
Nathan Explosion: Yeah, absolutely… We would love to play a show in the Gaza Strip… we've been trying to plan that for a while… But yeah, it will be awesome doing an outdoor show, right on the Gaza Strip… and ahh… just experience all the brutality… of Israel.
That's brutal! What would you wear?
Nathan Explosion: We will wear Kevlar stage outfits… bulletproof… so yeah… that would be awesome!
Do you have any last words of wisdom for the Israeli Metalist Magazine readers?
Nathan Explosion: Ahh yeah… Stay brutal Israel… amm… you know, get some sleep, get some rest… and ahh… I don't know, keep listening to metal, keep listening to Dethklok… How about that for a shameless plug?
