DETHKLOK Co-Creator Says Band's Current Tour With MASTODON Is 'A Sausage Fest'

Erica Landau of New Times recently conducted an interview with Brendon Small, co-creator of "Metalocalypse", the smash hit animated series on Adult Swim featuring the fictitious metal band DETHKLOK. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

New Times: What does metal touch on, and why is it so funny?

Brendon Small: Well here's the logic for me. What is death metal? Death metal is about the idea that you're going to die. Dying is brutal, metal is brutal. But there is a lot of other shit that's brutal that you experience every day of your life, that isn't death, but it makes your life brutal and horrible and fucked up. Things like humidity, going to the dentist, hangovers...that's why people relate to the brutality of metal is because their lives are filled with a whole bunch of torturous torments. So that was the universality of brutality that is somewhat mundane and boring, but those mundane and boring things can be tortuous things as well. That's my comic angle on it, at least. I don't think that that's actually true.

New Times: Why are there so few females on the show?

Brendon Small: People ask us why there are no main characters that are girls. And I kind of disagree I think some of our main characters are girls. I think Toki Wartooth is a woman. I think he is the sister. I think Pickles is very maternal.

New Times: So you're busting gender constructs as opposed to incorporating females?

Brendon Small: Come to one of our shows, and look at the ratio of girls to guys. It is an extension of the world. The world is a sausage fest. That's what metal is. This tour is like Sausage Fest 2009. You can spot a few girls here, but you definitely see a bunch of dudes, like, chanting along with the lyrics. And their numbers are outweighing the girls and it's kind of always been that way as far as fanship. The fans, the tour bus, it's a sausage fest. It is. The show is a sausage fest. And it's an unfortunate reflection of the world of metal.

New Times: How did the original incarnation of the tour go? I heard there were problems.

Brendon Small: The first thing was a college tour. My problem with it was that it wasn't played at venues with metal bands. It was kind of with indie-rock bands and it was somebody, somewhere packaging a really ridiculous package that I was very unhappy about it, because I thought they missed the mark about who the audience was. That was it. Playing-wise I had the same amazing, outstanding players including Gene Hoglan, [Bryan Beller], and Mike Keneally... You are playing at commencement halls in a college, and that's just not a cool metal venue. There's a big difference between a club atmosphere and a cafeteria.

New Times: When you conceptualized the show, did you always want to do a tour?

Brendon Small: It was all very thought-out, and it was logical thinking. Let's put out a record, there should be some way to be able to do it. How do I do that? Well, there's an anime show. You have a gigantic screen, you play the picture. Basically that was the idea. I wanted to do all that stuff, and I wanted the show to be able to live outside of its TV. I wanted it to be a big, fun, stupid ride. Seriously, I've been to a lot of shows and even bands that I love, when they're four songs in, I'm like, they're playing, that's really cool. But there's real opportunity to do something exciting and new.

New Times: "Metalocalypse" is in some ways the opposite of "Spinal Tap". How did "Spinal Tap" serve as inspiration?

Brendon Small: The thing is that "Spinal Tap" is the ultimate music comedy project. It's the best version of music and comedy and authenticity wrapped up in one... This show will never be anything as good as that and unfortunately "Spinal Tap" nailed it so early that we had to do things to not be like "Spinal Tap". It's a band going on its way out, and we went the other way and made it the best entertainment act on earth, to make it less "Spinal Tap"-esque.

Read the entire interview from New Times.