In 2006, Adult Swim, (on the Cartoon Network) premiered season one of 'Dethklok; Metalocalypse', After over a year of the respective characters winning over the hearts & dedication of many metal-fans & non-metal fans alike, the shows co-creator Brendon Small recruited seasoned musical veterans (including Gene Hoglan on drums) & recorded a CD with 15 songs, (which were partially heard on past episodes) & released THE DETHALBUM CD to a positive response, (with the limited edition 2 disc version selling out & fetching high prices on eBay soon after its release). Brendon (guitar) & his band then set out on a small tour of college towns where they played songs from the CD, as cartoon visages were projected on a screen. After a few failed attempts, I was able to reach Brendon on the phone for this interview.

METAL HELL: How long have you wanted to tour with songs from the show?

BRENDON SMALL: When the show was created, all of that stuff kind of happened in the same conversation, cause the whole thing about TV is that you can get canceled if your ratings start slumping. Then your show gets taken away from you & then it doesn’t exist anymore. That’s happened to me on my previous show & I wanted to find a way to be able to have the show exist only in audio form. That’s why the show is about a band & the band can put out a CD, even if the band doesn’t exist, so that was a big part of it, & if you have a CD then you should also be able to tour & then if you’re going to tour what do you do; you find a way to do it, & that idea was all thought of in the same afternoon, I was like yeah, of course, all this stuff makes sense.

MH: What does writing from a 3rd person perspective allow you to accomplish?

BS: I’m not sure. It’s fun to have a comedic angle that you can pass off on other people but most of the views & thoughts of the Dethklok songs come from me & how I feel about things anyway; just trying to find the darker humorous sides of things & express them in songs. There’s a song called “Hatrededy” on the deluxe edition that’s about stand up comedy & how brutal it is, like going on stage & dying, or even doing well & still hearing that kind of fuck you towards the audience, like what do you want me to stand around & entertain you? There’s such a huge hybrid of emotions when you’re performing comedy that I thought it would be funny to tap into the darker sides of that stuff & write songs about that. So that’s one of the songs that does express how I feel, but I get to filter it through this band.

MH: How did the idea for Dethklok first come & how was it developed as far as the characters? Were you trying to represent the prototypical metal musicians to be done in a way which metal fans & musicians would relate to?

BS: Basically when you’re in TV you’re always trying to figure out what the next show is. I was in the middle of selling another show to Sci-Fi network & it wasn’t working & they weren’t getting it & all I was doing with my time was going out & seeing metal shows. That was the only thing that was exciting me. I was so sick of TV & I do truly dislike comedy on TV except for like The Office (the British version) & old Seinfeld, but I’m not a big fan of TV comedy, which is weird that I work in it, except for on Adult Swim. They’re the only network that I know of that allows people to do what they wanna do without bothering them, so for me & my friend Tommy (Blacha), who was going out & seeing all those shows with me; one day I said I can’t believe this is the thing that we’re not pitching. I brought Tommy along & I said I’ve got an in with Cartoon Network & they’ll listen to my pitch & I can write music & stuff, for me that’s really easy to do. I called the head of the network & said I think I’ve got a show, it’s about a death metal band, there may be elements of black metal or thrash, & it’s about a band & they’re gonna be the biggest entertainment act in the world & there’s gonna be tons of slapstick murder, like Monty Python & The Holy Grail style murder, & I’m not interested in understanding anything these characters are saying & that was the pitch & he said green light, do it, write it up.  I sat down with my guitar & I wrote the theme song & I thought with the theme song I was gonna capture the energy, the grandiosity & the ridiculousness of what I wanted the show to be, so the next thing we knew we were in production. Basically me & Tommy sat down with the characters & we were like okay we want 2 guitarists, a rhythm guitar player & a lead player & they can switch & could do twin harmonies, I was just trying to think of what the band could do. I want the drummer to be able to sing occasionally if he wants to & have a melodic voice, maybe like Roger Taylor from Queen who does the higher pitched harmonies & stuff like that. The singer, was the only one that was actually modeled after somebody. Corpsegrinder was the model for the singer & he moves like him, & Corpsegrinder knows it too. I think he’s the ultimate death metal front man. He’s just such a badass, not on attitude but on looks & movement & we just divided it up. I think if you’re in any band, they start to fit into acrchetypes; there’s some metal bass players where you can’t hear ‘em on the records. That’s gonna be an inferiority complex that manifests itself into self hatred. (With) Toki & Skwisgaar; what we’re saying is (that it's) the fastest guitar player alive & the second fastest in the same band. The rhythm guitar player is gonna be a perpetual second class citizen, & we wanted to have them be Scandinavian to represent the black metal vibe a little bit. Nathan represents the Florida death metal world. We’re not telling anybody where Murderface is from. Pickles is from the Midwest & it’s like covering our bases with a little bit of representation from different styles. We named the characters in probably like 20 minutes & committed to it, & said that’s Toki Wartooth, that’s Skwisgaar Skwigelf, William Murderface, Nathan Explosion & Pickles The Drummer, that was pretty much it. It all came really quickly & usually if shit comes quickly to you (then) you’re excited about your own thing, which is 90 percent of the battle. You’re not trying to force-feed a show. It all came really quickly & the music was easy & fun to write. I spent 3-4 months with my guitar, trying to figure out what the band was gonna sound like & recording tracks & figuring out the tonality.

MH: For Skwisgaar how would you compare your style to Toki’s?

SKWISGAAR SKWIGELF: The ways I would compare my guitar styles to Toki’s is that basically the main difference that separates us is that he is sloppy’s & slow & really’s doesn’t have his understanding’s for tone, whereas I does have that. He sometimes will put on his guitar backwards. There have been times where we plays a live show & he forgets completely’s to plugs in, whereas I will do everything’s right. I’ve been trying to impeach him’s from the band for’s you know a pretty’s long time, so there you are.

MH: How did the guest appearances initially come about?

BS: Metallica was the first one. I knew from a friend that they were interested in doing cartoon voices, cause they just liked it, but we contacted them, I don’t think they knew what they were getting into at all. They knew they were doing a show about a death metal band & blah-blah-blah, but we went up to San Francisco to meet them & had them read a whole bunch of stuff & they did a great job & they were super awesome & funny  & all their stuff was great. Metallica started it & after we had Metallica, the biggest metal band in the world already as a voice over,  it gave it some validity. Then we got Arch Enemy & Nevermore through our buddy; Jody, who was at Krank Amplifiers at the time. He said how would you like to get Michael Amott on your show & I was like that would be amazing, I’m a huge fan of his. We have a bunch of endorsement deals on the show. I called Gibson & all these different people & said hey I’ve got a TV show, let’s work something out & all those guys know other people & then when bands come to town you go & see ‘em & you meet ‘em & talk to ‘em. I introduced myself to Corpsegrinder backstage at a Sounds Of The Underground thing & told him about the show & how we’re huge fans of theirs, & he came & he’s in season 2 & he’s got a recurring character that’s a lot of fun. Basically we just called people. For King Diamond I went through Metallica’s management & they said Lars keeps in touch with King Diamond, so through Lars & through Metallica’s management I got in touch with King Diamond & called him at home & talked to him about the show & he was honestly one of the coolest people I’ve met, that’s a celebrity. King Diamond was amazing & he was the first person I thought of. We thought who could we get on the show, & it was like what about Dio & Lemmy & all those guys & I’m like yeah, those guys are awesome but I’d rather go into what you don’t see on TV that often. You always see Talking Heads & Ozzy & all those guys, I’m like what about King Diamond, what about Corpsegrinder, what about Nevermore or Arch Enemy or Emperor or Dimmu Borgir, all those guys that you would normally not expect to see in a show like this & when the metal fans found out about it I’m sure that they were going insane to find out that some of their heroes got to be funny & be a part of something that’s incredibly different but somewhat supportive of the metal community.

MH: For Pickles, how did you feel about he Snakes & Barrells reunion?

PICKLES THE DRUMMMER: Yeah, you know, I like being a frontman of a band, I kind of miss it every once in a while, so Snakes & Barrells was like, I love it, it’s fun, but the first reunion attempt did not go well. They all kind of went back on drugs; on that totally awesome sweet Alabama liquid snake & that album is still soaring to the top of the charts even though we never really got through an entire song, but yeah, there’s still talk of a reunion. I’m in touch with those guys. They’re doing better & I’m in the middle of suing them for the rights of the name Snakes & Barrells cause we’re all kind of co-owners of that. If I can get the name then maybe I can re-do, you know another tour, or put out another album, cause there’s an audience for that. There’s people who wanna hear it.  With Dethklok, anytime anyone has a side project people get a little jealous, but I don’t see no wedding ring on this finger that says I gotta do Dethklok all the time. So Pickles is gonna do what Pickles wants to do, so deal with it Dethklok.