BRENDON SMALL'S GALAKTIKON: First Taste Of 'A High Stakes Intergalactic Extreme Rock Album'

Brendon Small, co-creator of "Metalocalypse", the smash hit animated series on Adult Swim featuring the fictitious metal band DETHKLOK, has written and produced BRENDON SMALL'S GALAKTIKON "A High Stakes Intergalactic Extreme Rock Album", the debut release from his long-awaited side project. Due in April, the CD's arrival will coincide with the Season 4 premiere of "Metalocalypse".

"On My Way", the closing track from "A High Stakes", can be streamed using the SoundCloud player below (courtesy of CraveOnline.com).

"I'm thrilled to finally give people a taste of what I've been blabbing about doing for months," states Brendon. "'On My Way' is the last track on the record, where our hero confronts the villain and saves the girl, while complaining the whole time!"

Coming off of the second DETHKLOK album which was heavier and darker than the first, BRENDON SMALL'S GALAKTIKON searches for melody (in the vocal) and finds inspiration in modern black metal, QUEEN, FOO FIGHTERS, SOUNDGARDEN, SMASHING PUMPKINS and WEEZER. No influence is unwelcome on this project. Brendon Small paired with DETHKLOK drummer Gene Hoglan (STRAPPING YOUNG LAD, TESTAMENT, FEAR FACTORY) and DETHKLOK bassist Bryan Beller (DETHKLOK, STEVE VAI, MIKE KENEALLY) and DETHKLOK engineer and mixer Ulrich Wild.

"This album should be thought of as an audio comic book, an over acted chamber drama, a ridiculous premise that takes itself way too seriously all the way to the end," states Small.

The BRENDON SMALL'S GALAKTIKON "A High Stakes Intergalactic Extreme Rock Album" cover art was designed by Antonio Canobbio and can be seen below.

In a July 2011 interview with Revolver magazine, Small was asked at what point he decided it was time to make a solo record. "There was a time when I didn't know if I was going to do the second DETHKLOK album," he said. "I had the studio lined up, and the players lined up, and the engineer and co-producer, and all that shit, and unfortunately, the guy we were negotiating with went on vacation and left things kind of dead. So I said, 'OK, fuck this — I'm going to spend my own money and get these guys doing something.'

"I love melody and I love melodic vocals in metal, not just the guttural stuff — though obviously it works with DETHKLOK, and I wouldn't want to change a thing. I long for melody in the vocal.

"When I was developing the DETHKLOK sound, some of the things I was writing weren't heavy enough for DETHKLOK, but I still liked them. So I was like, I'm going to make this into something, so I'm going to get Gene [Hoglan] and I'm going to get Bryan Beller, and we're going to make this project, and I'm going to figure out what it is. Then the negotiations got all cleared up, and we went right back into the same studio and did the second DETHKLOK album."

Regarding whether those non-DETHKLOK songs eventually became the basis for "Brendon Small's Galaktikon", Small said, Yeah. I had all these songs where there were elements of QUEEN, but also elements of FOO FIGHTERS and SMASHING PUMPKINS, with some DIO elements as well. My kind of rule for the record was, it's going to be whatever it ends up being, and I'm going to tell a story through the whole thing. Once I started putting the pieces together, I found the story, and I realized that, OK, this is a high-stakes, intergalactic, extreme rock album. And if I do this right, it's going to be like an audio comic book. It's turned out to be something that I'm really happy to have done because I flexed a different muscles while making it — but if you're one of the kids who liked DETHKLOK, you're going to be able to tell that it's the same dude playing guitar, and Gene Hoglan on drums and Bryan Beller on bass. DETHKLOK has to be a certain kind of sound, but this other thing is whatever it needs to be. I got to pull out a vocoder and do ELO-style things here and there, and there's an instrumental on there that's a total tribute to Vai and Satriani and Yngwie and Steve Morse.