YOU ASKED, DETHKLOK’S BRENDON SMALL ANSWERED
Last week we posted a call for questions to ask Metalocalypse creator / Dethklok frontman Brendon Small, and you all gave us your best questions in the comments. Later that day we hand-picked our favorite ones and got on the phone with Brendon to pass them along. Your questions his answers, below.
RomuluXX: “How does it feel to know Dethalbum 2 sold on par with Megadeth’s Endgame? Could this lead to a battle…TO THE DETH!?
Did they sell the same amount? Wow, that’s insane. I guess that’s my reaction: “Wow, that’s insane.” It seems like it’s good for both of us. We just got those numbers in today, so I’m pretty blown away. Anything that I do in relation to the show is ultimately for me and not the audience. If anybody ends up liking it beyond that, then it ends up being very cool. I’m still dealing with the fact that it did well . . . this morning.
ibanezninja:”Where are the 2 songs that were originally planned for the deluxe version, and will we ever get a full version of ‘Impeach God’?”
That was a total marketing clusterfuck where some dildo put out the wrong press release, because I never said we’d put out 2 extra songs. I killed that thing like 6 months ago. They said “can you do extra music?” I said “are you kidding me? I’ve got to do a TV show, I just did 12 songs, and I don’t have time to sleep. I haven’t taken a day off in 5 years. How am I going to do this?” They said, “Well we wrote up this press release, blah blah blah.” There was talk of doing that stuff, but at the end of the day that wasn’t planned to be on there. It’s funny when you plan to put out a record and all that stuff, the record is the thing. That’s what I’m selling, and some douchebag from marketing fucked all that stuff up. Now I got to answer those questions all day long, and it had nothing to do with me when I said I wasn’t going to do it. It’s ridiculous because fans that buy stuff are bummed out because of a stupid, stupid dildo in marketing. I wish I had an e-mail to give out of the person that fucked this up because I would.
The Metal Grinder: “How has Dethklok pushed you musically, and what are the specific challenges to integrating music with a show so closely?”
I studied music years ago at Berkley College of Music. Ultimately what I got out of that was some good composition chops which were basically how to write yourself out of a corner. If you got one good riff, how do you connect it to the next one? How do you connect that to the other part? How do you make one section work with another? Beyond that, it was just listening to music that I liked growing up like Queen, Metallica and stuff like that. You hear a lot of that in Dethklok. Musically the challenge is how much stuff you can deliver in a very short amount of time. That’s what the challenge of the whole show has been. The challenge of the first record and the second record was: trust your instincts, keep moving forward, and keep plowing. You have no choice but to get better. I definitely feel like my chops have improved from the first record to the second record guitar-wise and my vibrato is better — just tiny things that you start noticing because I’m spending more time with the instrument than I have in awhile.
Smitty: “Will we ever hear a full Planet Piss songs or Taking It Easy?”
You know, what I would love to do, and there’s never enough time in the day, but I would love to do a whole record — and I shouldn’t even say this because I’ll probably get bothered for it, but I would like to do a record of the things that are not Dethklok. Things like that, Snakes and Barrels – it would be really fun to get a bunch of different musicians in and do something where I’m not doing it all by myself. I think it would be fun. When I do a Dethklok record, I have to go “Okay, this is a Dethklok record. I can’t put in the stuff that is not Dethklok on this record.” So hopefully some day I’ll be able to do something like that.
Ethan The Zombie Slayer: “Can we expect to see more voice work from the members of the metal community in the new season, perhaps your tourmates in Mastodon?”
That’s funny that you mentioned that, [because] we just recorded Mastodon in the upcoming episode and they were… we were blown away. We get a lot of people and we’re always surprised that they have this kind of other talent or can do voiceover stuff. Mastodon surprised us more than anybody else — they were really funny. Just hanging out with those guys on this tour has been really fun. They have a very good sense of humor. A lot of people in rock and roll, metal and all that stuff spend all their time on the bus just watching comedy and Monty Python and stuff like that. We have Mastodon coming. We have members of In Flames coming this season. I have some of my guitar heroes playing parts on this season, doing voiceovers, like Satriani, Vai, and Slash. I’m a guitar nerd so I had to reach out to those guys to see if I can get them on the show. They were great too.
Sean: “Please describe the transition between Home Movies and Dethklok. The parallel in both seems to be the focus on strong character development and relatively simple plots.”
Right. I would agree with that. Ultimately the two shows are dissimilar in the way that they look and the way that the characters behave towards each other for the most part. Home Movies was nice. Everyone was nice to each other. There were pastels and things that made you calm and the other one is to make you not very calm. Ultimately, they’re both shows about families. The band, as stupid or as smart as they may be, is ultimately a dysfunctional family in one way or another. This family is not bound by love, but by business and circumstance. It’s funny to watch who the little sister is and who the little brother of Dethklok is. Who is the father figure and mother figure of the band? Stuff like that. Ultimately when I finished that show [Home Movies] – it never really performed that well. It’s done so much better since it went on DVD since it’s been cancelled. It’s got so much more of a following now than it ever did when it was on the air. I didn’t want to do that show again. I wanted to do something else, and that was the transition point. The network didn’t want another Home Movies either. They were like “we loved it all, but we want a new one for us.” So I said “okay, I’m going to do something completely different.” And hey, I already did Home Movies. I don’t want to turn into one of those cartoon makers where every character looks the same on every single show that they do. I would rather disappear into another show. It’s not about me or anything else. I just want the show to work.
