Dethklok's Brendon Small Names Two Movies That Inspired the Creation of 'Metalocalypse'

It's been 20 years since Metalocalypse first graced our TV screens and creator Brendon Small spoke with Full Metal Jackie about the origins of the characters he's lived with for two decades now.

Within the chat, Small name checked two well known films that in part influences how Metalocalypse came together.

"The whole idea was, how can we make something that kind of was like Spinal Tap. God bless Rob Reiner. God bless Christopher Guest and all those people, because they did the ultimate comedy musical kind of excursion first with Spinal Tap. And Spinal Tap crossed off the list for us something like the band that's on its way out," he shared.

Not looking to repeat that narrative, he offered, "We thought, 'We can't do the band that's on its way out. We have to do the biggest entertainment act on earth.' And Some Kind of Monster had just come out, so it was in the zeitgeist, so that made it easier for us to pitch it. So the idea is, how do you build a world where this project is the number one project in that world? And that world-building was a big part of the first episode."

Within the chat with Full Metal Jackie for her weekend radio show, Small reflected on the show's emergence and staying power with a younger generation. He also shared how the Dethklok band has evolved from Metalocalypse and the experiences that stand out to him that came about because of his involvement with bringing the series and the music to light.

Plus, Brendan shares some of his musical favorites of today and discusses a bit of what he's up to in present day.

Check out more of the chat below.

It's Full Metal Jackie and I'm so excited to welcome back to the show one of our longtime friends to the show, Brendon Small of Dethklok and Metalocalypse fame and the Dethklok Brutal Pick of the Week fame for many, many years.

I love whenever I have an excuse to talk to you, it means we're doing something really fun.

When I'm doing my show every week and I'm putting the Brutal Pick of the Week, I laugh every single week. You kill me, dude.

It's really funny having this relationship with these characters over 20 years now. Twenty years, can you believe it, that these characters have been living inside of my head? And they just take over. I have nothing to do with it. They start improvising.

At some point I just kind of come to and I go, "I wonder what... Oh my god, I'm introducing a song and it took me seven minutes. I went on a seven-minute improv gag just being an idiot for a while."

But you say the most hilarious stuff. It just kills me.

Those characters, they take over. I have very, very little to do with it.

Well, Brendon, how has it been 20 years since Metalocalypse first came into our lives?

20 years. How does time work? That is a good question. I don't understand. We just keep living and being alive, and I guess then all this time goes by, and, then at some point you check, and it was 20 years ago.

It feels like 20 years to me. But the crazy thing is, I think this show, there's something about this show, and there's no other show that's like this show, like Metalocalypse, that has this heavy metal connection, this kind of friendship with the world of heavy metal and with other bands and all that stuff. There's nothing else like it.

We went to Europe for the first time this year. We took the project out and tested the waters. And it was so cool to see all the way in Europe, in Copenhagen, in France, in London and in Belgium. It was so cool to see people singing along, knowing the words, being very, very familiar with the project. And then I realized, there's no competition.

There's no other heavy metal Who's doing this? No one's doing this. Just me. I've cornered the market. I've cornered the market on heavy metal cartoons and comedy and all that stuff. So I feel very happy that we've got all this time, these two decades behind us of building this thing out, building out a fan base of new people discovering it every single year.

Our fans somehow got younger over the years. I don't know how that happened. But it's really cool to see that it's still around and people are still excited.

Dethklok, "Murmaider"

Brendon Small is on the show with us this week. We're obviously talking about 20 years of Metalocalypse, What has it meant to you to see those characters have such an enduring legacy where fans are still clamoring for more?

It's really fun because this is not like any other TV show. Our show had such a small staff, such a small group of people just working really hard. This is like non-union French hours as they call it in the business. No matter what, you have to do to get your script finished to get the music finished to get the voiceover finished and we would do it.

I would work through the weekends. I didn't have much of a social life. I was just working and working and just trying to micromanage and work with and collaborate with great artists and collaborate with great editors and actors. We've had everyone from Mark Hamill to Malcolm McDowell to Werner Herzog on the show to like all kinds of great musical actors from Slash to Metallica to King Diamond, Cannibal Corpse to my guitar heroes from Joe Satriani to Steve Vai to all these people. So for me, it's like I created the ultimate job for myself.

And what you're doing when you're trying to sell a TV show is you're saying, "What is the coolest job I could possibly have that I could find people that kind of [like]" I'm basically pitching to myself. I'm making stuff that I think makes me laugh. I'm writing music that I think sounds cool to my ears.

And if that works for other people, boy, we've crossed that perfect axis of what I want and what you want and we meet in the middle.

As we look back on Metalocalypse, what was the first inkling to you that you had something special in these characters? And did you have one of those first time experiences where you were aware that people were starting to pay attention to the series once it started airing?

It's a good question. The whole idea was, how can we make something that kind of was like Spinal Tap. God bless Rob Reiner. God bless Christopher Guest and all those people, because they did the ultimate comedy musical kind of excursion first with Spinal Tap. And Spinal Tap crossed off the list for us something like the band that's on its way out.

So we thought, "We can't do the band that's on its way out. We have to do the biggest entertainment act on earth." And Some Kind of Monster had just come out, so it was in the zeitgeist, so that made it easier for us to pitch it. So the idea is, how do you build a world where this project is the number one project in that world? And that world-building was a big part of the first episode.

The media on the show and through the fans on the show, those two kind of voices were really, really big, and that's kind of who you hear first are the servants of Dethklok on the show, like the people that kind of worship them.

Telling the story from their point of view at the very beginning kind of set the stage for us to have these five take over. And I say that with affection because I think that's what I need my lead characters to be are total idiots or otherwise I don't think I get to do comedy.

So in my mind, then what would happen in the first season that really made me think, "Okay, there's some longevity beyond the fact that we [made it to air]" I think we set this up in the right way.... was that it started kind of like building on its own.

It started building its own lore inside of the underwater stuff, like Thunderhorse, to Mermaider, to go into the water. It was all kind of in the first season. It really set a subterranean landscape underneath the one that you see. So, there was like this kind of undercurrent that was pushing it along on top of that.

Our season premiere was like the highest-rated premiere at the time on the network. So, we had found our audience very early on and we were lucky because, again, I thought, "No one's talking to the people like me out there. No one's talking to the heavy metal fans, or the guitar nerds, or the creative people out there, so let's start a conversation with them, and let's talk about something that's kind of ridiculous, which is celebrity-ism."

And those were all the things that were swirling in our head in the early days, and that was the idea. And now we're here 20 years later.

Brendon, one of the great things to come from Metalocalypse is that you were able to put together this band, the great band, Dethklok, and not only come up with music that fed the stories you were telling, but also could actually go out on tour. How was it finding the right group of musicians to carry this chemistry, and how has it evolved over the years after making it into a live experience?

That was the question early on. In the very first meeting that we had was like, "How do I make the music?" And then, "What do you do after the season's done? Can we make a record? And if we make a record, can we tour the record, and what would that look like?"

And I thought, "Well, what did the Gorillaz do, and how do you make that work, and how can we be funnier, and how can we make it exciting to an audience?" And I thought, "It all started with Gene Hoglan." I needed a real drummer who had some gravitas, who was just technically brilliant, who would end up being just such a great collaborator, and we have a very good kind of respectful, creative friendship.

It's really great how it's kind of maintained itself all these years. But that was the first idea. And then I saw Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller play live. These are two guys who were kind of in the Zappa world. Mike Keneally was a Frank Zappa guitar player.

Bryan Beller was a Berklee College of Music grad who was playing with Steve Vai and he was playing with all kinds of these great musicians. And he played with Keneally, and I thought, "These two guys are gonna be great because they can do anything. They can do anything." They're not necessarily from the heavy metal world, but now they are.

Now they work in heavy metal all the time. But that was the first one, and these are great side men who would work with Devin Townsend and work with Satriani and Steve Vai, and all those guys, so they weren't always available to me. So in 2019 I had to put together Dethklok 2.0, and that's where I involved Pete Griffin on bass, who played with everybody from Brent Hinds to Generation Axe to just a guy who supports lots of great guitar players.

And then Neily Brosh had played with Tony MacAlpine, and she has her own whole thing. Now she's playing with Danny Elfman and she's playing with Cirque du Soleil. She does all kinds of crazy stuff, but she's like an acrobatic super guitar player. And so now they're in the current Dethklok lineup.

It's Full Metal Jackie, Brendan Small is with us and you were just talking about the group of musicians you've brought together to make this Dethklok live show what it is.

The truth is that everyone ... kind of the way we joke around a lot when we're playing live is that we're all a bunch of prostitute carnies going from show to show doing these ridiculous acts of daredevil-dom. And because our show is so crazy, we have to play to picture, so if anything goes wrong, we are in big, big trouble.

And we know that when we go out onstage every single night, it really adds to the excitement, it adds to the fun, and that's why you have to have amazing players with you.

Every single person you've chosen is technically beyond and incredibly talented.

They are so talented. And you're right, they're super musicians. That's what I think of them. They're not just regular musicians. They can do things that other people can't do, and also, that's what I need, because if I'm putting together a lineup, I need to be the worst person onstage.

You need to find guys that are better than you. That what you're saying?

Exactly, exactly. So that if I drop my guitar, the show can still keep going on. But putting a great band together is also putting together a really good hang where everyone can just like relax. Sometimes the flights are gonna be late, sometimes the bus is gonna break down. Can everybody be cool? That's the thing they don't tell you in music school is just be cool and relax. Everything will sort itself out.

Not only that, we have a really great stage team. So we've got a really great tour manager, production manager. We've got amazing techs, we've got an amazing front of house, so the whole crew has come together.

What I've inadvertently done is built a business of live touring over the past three years. So here we are again, and we're coming out to celebrate 20 years, and we're doing it with Amon Amarth of all people and Castle Rock. So this is gonna be a show that really blends just total theatricality and fun and heavy metal.

It's gonna be the most fun you're gonna have in a live experience this year. I guarantee it, or your money back. No, I take back the last part. I take back the last part, but everything else I do agree.

Brendon, you're hitting the road for a killer tour with Amon Amarth and Castle Rat. Can you speak about what we might see coming up from those live shows? What does it means to be touring with these bands? And are there more things we should also be looking for in terms of celebrating the 20th anniversary?

Well, first of all, let me go into what goes through our mind when we're putting these shows together. When I talk to touring agents and when I talk to my team, I say, "Let's put on a show. Let's bring theatricality into the heavy metal world." So, you've seen that we played with Babymetal before. You've seen that we played with DragonForce and Nekrogoblikon. These guys all bring really cool shows to the stage. They bring so much fun and ridiculous flare.

I grew up watching Iron Maiden videos 'cause they never played near my little, crappy hometown, so I would just watch Eddie come out and I'd watch the grandiosity, the theatricality of what Bruce Dickinson would do or what Iron Maiden would do collectively.

I always thought, "That is why people should be leaving their houses, to see something along those lines." When you see Amon Amarth's live show or when you see what Castle Rat does and you blend it with our crazy show, which is basically we're playing the pictures.

We have a movie theater-sized screen and we're almost like a pit band and it's my job to get out of the way and let the characters take over and hypnotize you into having an experience that you've never had before live. There's like a point where I look out and I look at the faces of of everybody and their jaws are open and their starting to roll back in there and they're almost drooling and I'm like, "Yes, that's it. What punched you.? Success." I have drilled into your pineal gland and I'm going to live into your subconscious forever. That's what I really, really want us to do.

What I want is entertainment from the whole ticket. I don't want you just to come and see Amon Amarth or just see Castle Rat or just see Dethklok. I want you to come and experience the entire show and that's what was happening with Nekrogoblikon and DragonForce and BabyMetal and Jason Richardson and all. There's something theatrical happening and the whole show is meant to just take your attention and just squeeze it and squeeze every drop out of it. And so you go home exhausted and go, "Oh my God, what a show."

Brendon, obviously your love of heavy metal gave you great source material for Metalocalypse. In return, Metalocalypse has put you in more metal situations over the last two decades. What has been your favorite experience that has come about as a result of the series and playing with the Dethklok band?

I have so many things that have come out of this that are positive. I can't think of the negative stuff other than that TV is a crazy business and it always has been. That has nothing to do with me, it just always has been crazy.

The greatest things is that I have met heroes of mine from guitar heroes from like Billy Gibbons to Satriani to Steve Vai to acting heroes and directing heroes like Werner Herzog, Mark Hamill to Malcolm McDowell. What I have learned is these people, these professionals are the coolest people in the world. They are my heroes. And to meet them personally is to find out that they are really great people on top of being my heroes.

READ MORE: Brendon Small Names the Films + Scores That Inspired 'Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar'

Also, just as a musician, I realized that these guys have built their own careers out of nothing and  they're really articulate, they're easy to speak to, and they've always been so cool as far as seeing what I've been doing and going, "Yeah, I see it. I recognize it and it's very cool." So it's nice to hear them say cool things about the projects we do.

But ultimately, what I get out of it is that these are people who want what they want, know how to get it and are cool while doing it.

And so it's like a Make-A-Wish Foundation for me, really. The best thing that I've gotten to meet all these really cool people from Metallica to Cannibal Corpse and to see that these guys are all just ridiculous artists with this amazing integrity. And that to me this is just very exciting.

There's an excitement in heavy metal. There usually is. I don't know how you can do it without being excited about it.

Brendon, you've been a champion of metal. Plenty has changed in the last 20 years since Metalocalypse first arrived. How do you feel about the current state of metal and what are you listening to at the moment?

I'm not good at these kinds of answers because I only know what I like and that's that's all I've ever known. I've never been an expert on the history of heavy metal or what it does.

I notice now that there is crazy technical prog metal that blows my mind. I've been listening to Car Bomb lately, which makes my head explode. Like, the Meshuggah influence on heavy metal, I think is grandiose. it's so big. And I hear that in stuff that I'm interested in and the technical side of heavy metal or death metal or prog metal. So, I hear a lot of that.

That's at least coming through in what I'm listening to or at least what Apple Music kind of shows me. It says, "Check this out, check that out." But it's cool to have moody, brooding, badass, just like dead serious stuff. I really think that's so important. But what I don't always hear is fun inside of the music, and that's what I'm always thinking my role is, is like how do I make this fun? It's ridiculous, Gene Hoglan and I remark every single night when we get offstage how many people are smiling at our shows.

And we are telling jokes. That's not always what happens at metal shows, by the way. But there is fun in early thrash, I think, from Anthrax to Testament, to Metallica. There's so much fun inside of that that early genre of metal. And I think that that's something I'm always trying to keep alive in my head, like what is a really, really fun thing that just makes the audience go crazy?

So, that's what I think, but I don't know if that represents anything else under current state of heavy metal.

I think that you're right, I think that some of the old school metal that had a sense of humor, that's sort of lost. Like metal is pretty serious nowadays.

Yeah. And it should be. I think that you need seriousness and I think you need non-seriousness. I think they have to exist together. You can't just make it all funny. You can't be like making fun of it. I think it has to be like embodying it and then finding something else to talk about inside of it. So, that's usually what I'm trying to think of, or, or when I disappear and let Dethklok think that's what they do when they take over.

Brendon, Metalocalypse has been such a huge part of your life here for some time now, but it's not all you do. I saw at one point you were discussing a new heavy metal live action thriller last year. What else is on your plate these days in terms of what you're working on and what can you tell us?

Well, that is funny. That project you're talking about. I haven't said very much about it, but that is something that is kind of at the forefront of what I'm doing when I'm not working on this stuff. So that is a project that you never know what's gonna happen with these things.

I won't really say too much more about that thing, but writing a feature and in a genre that's not something that I'm used to is a really fun challenge. Usually what I'm doing is I'm sitting there and I'm just going that's what it looks like, ah. Wake up, think of something good. And that's what writing is, it's not that exciting.

It's pretty boring but that's how you get Metalocalypse. If we didn't sit there and work and make ourselves miserable with the writing part and structuring it, then we wouldn't get to have all the fun.

So I'm at that point still. That is a project that I'm working on. And that's what I'm thinking of. I think the TV world is very strange. I think features have always been my favorite thing in the world. Now after getting to do my own feature with Metalocalypse, the Army of the Doomstar, it makes me want to do more of that stuff, live action or otherwise.

And so live action is something that I am thinking about a great deal. I love directing, I love writing, I love producing and I like writing the music for something. So, how can I wad all that stuff together and basically abuse myself and wring everything out of myself so that all that stuff is free and that we don't have to worry about somebody else doing it. That's what I usually am thinking of.

And it's just like Metalocalypse, just like these live tours, like how much can I bring to the table before we start spending money is my main productorial ethos, I would say.

Brendon, inquiring minds want to know, is there going to be new Dethklok music?

Is there gonna be? That's a good question. That's a really good question. I get asked that often and that is something that's possible. I never say no to it, but ...

But not ahead of this tour, let's say?

Well let me tell you about this tour, and what's gonna be what I think the quintessential live Dethklok experience is. We have like a framework that we use. And we're gonna probably keep the same framework for a while, because to me, it's like going to Disneyland and riding Space Mountain.

You don't want the roller coaster to change, you wanna experience the thrill ride. But what we get to do is we get to kind of take the whole timeline and mix it up, and we get to put in some stuff that, in this case, in this new tour, I won't say much, but some stuff you've never heard before. Some very deep cuts. So if you're a super fan, you're gonna be like, "What the hell?" So things like that are what I'm thinking. It's my job to make sure that there's some different kind of comedy, some like new bits and pieces to keep everyone excited and alive.

So that's in fact what we're doing right now. I sit there and I work with a team. I don't know if you saw the launch of the whole idea, the launch of the Amon Amarth, including Johan into our animated world was something that was like an idea that like what can we do that kind of feels like there's a little bit more in this world that we can kind of play with?

So all those ideas are kind of coming together. And without kind of giving anything away, that's the kind of fun we plan on having, is just a little bit of new stuff, mixing it up, making it completely worth your while to ride the the roller coaster, but you know, changing it up, swapping it out, getting different songs in there are some things I think we need to play for the audience and some things where we get to swap them out, so we're always measuring those things. And those are a lot of conversations that Gene Hoglan and I have.

Thanks to Dethklok's Brendon Small for the interview. Stay up to date with the band and the tour through their website, Facebook and Instagram accounts. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.

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