Dethklok Exist For Free Guitars

There's a death metal band touring right now who are selling out clubs across North America. The same band also have the highest charting death metal album in history, selling more than 33,000 records in the U.S. in its first week. They also have their own hugely popular television series, which is currently in its second season.

Those are all pretty notable achievements for any extreme metal band, but what's even more impressive is that the band in question aren't even real. They're a cartoon act known as Dethklok.

If you don't already know, Dethklok are the fictional band behind the Adult Swim series Metalocalypse, which includes vocalist Nathan Explosion, bassist William Murderface, guitarists Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Toki Wartooth, and drummer Pickles. Part Spinal Tap, part celebrity reality show, Metalocalypse has become a phenomenon. The show's huge success has allowed creator Brendon Small (who's also the voice of Explosion, Pickles and Skwigelf) to expand his creation into other media outlets.

Last year, Small, with help from drummer Gene Hoglan of Death and Strapping Young Lad fame, recorded and released Dethklok's debut, The Dethalbum. It combined the show's humour with some surprisingly impressive songwriting. Small's next challenge has been bringing Dethklok to the stage.

Small took some suggestions from fellow cartoon act Gorillaz, but he wanted to do something above and beyond that.

"I'd seen the DVDs of the Gorillaz stuff, and I think it was a really cool idea and the animation was outstanding," says Small. "But you didn't get to see the band, which is the part that kind of got me.

"You want to see Gene Hoglan play drums. You want to see these guys beat the shit out of instruments and just nail everything. That's a lot of the fun of metal shows. So when there's a guitar part coming up, I like to check out what the guitarist is doing.

"We're back-lit, but we're standing at the front of the stage and the screen is above us. But the show isn't really about what we look like, it's about what we sound like, because we don't look like Dethklok, and I vowed to not embarrass the audience by wearing stupid wigs and mustaches and stuff like that.

"The tour's been great. We've sold-out every venue so far. Everything has exceeded our expectations."

Now that Dethklok have conquered television, sales charts and the live stage, the next logical move would be for Dethklok to come alive on the big screen, right? Well, not exactly.

"I really believe that what makes this band cool and interesting is that they don't exist, and the second you make them actually exist, then they're in our vans," Small jokes. "When you're writing comedy and you're just trying to keep characters alive, there's a lot of tiny rules that you put together that a lot of people don't know about or think about because a lot of them aren't writers.

"But there are certain things I think in my head that if we started doing, the show will start sucking and it'll jump the shark, so this is one of those things. I remember somebody at some point said, 'What about the Dethklok live action movie with Will Ferrell, Jack Black and Ben Stiller?' I almost threw up. I'm like, 'That's the worst fucking idea ever.'"

The show is obviously more popular among headbangers who can easily identify all the different metal references, like the restaurant called Dimmu Burger (an obvious nod to black metal band Dimmu Borgir) or the character James Cronos (named after Venom frontman Cronos). Although it may look like the show makes fun of heavy metal, Small says Metalocalypse isn't laughing at metal culture as much as it's laughing at American popular culture.

"The TV show is kind of not about what you're watching. Our TV show is about celebrity. It's about these five guys who can't fucking do anything for themselves. They can't make dinner, they don't know what time it is, they don't know what day it is, they'll fucking fire you at the drop of a hat. They're prima donnas and they're narcissists and they're egomaniacs. That's what that show's about. It's about how we've been fascinated with that, and that alone, for the last 10 years in America. All we've been getting for entertainment is watching dildos not being able to fucking open a door with a key because they're too fucking famous and stupid and they don't know how things work."

Small, who's a stand-up comedian and graduate of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, reveals his true intent behind creating a heavy metal-based TV series.

"The show gets to be about metal because I like guitars, and the whole process exists because I get free guitars from Gibson. And that's why I'm in show business, is to collect these free guitars. And that's it. I wish there was more of a reason, but I'm a fucking greedy asshole that just wants guitars."