Brendon Small on Adult Swim’s Refusal to Renew Metalocalypse: “There was no debate, there wasn’t even a returned phone call. It was a hard ‘no.'”

Despite the ever-persistent rumors to the contrary (mostly just wishful thinking) and overwhelming demand from fans, it seems that the greatest TV show about metal ever — Metalocalypse — will not be coming back for a final conclusion, or at least not anytime soon.

Loudwire has an upcoming episode of their podcast with the show’s creator Brendon Small as a guest, and in a tease of that episode they just posted a quote from Small about Adult Swim’s refusal to even entertain the idea of bringing it back, even knowing — or perhaps in spite of — how loudly the show’s fans were clamoring for it:

“There was no debate, there wasn’t even a returned phone call. It was a hard ‘no.’ It was about as hard of a ‘no’ as you could possibly get … It’s basically like a crappy relationship at the end where we should probably break up, but they kept on dangling the idea of doing this thing in front of me and then dangling other TV show ideas and stuff like that.

“What I think really happened was [‘Metalocalypse Now’ campaigners] drove Adult Swim insane. I think Adult Swim, for some reason, took it very personally. The truth was that people were saying, ‘Hey, what the hell? Where’s our show? We’re here for this show, can you give it to us? We’re gonna watch it like crazy,’ and [Adult Swim] said no. I think somebody’s thin-skinned and somebody got their feeling hurt.”

It really defies all logic: there is SUCH a vocal demand for this show, and surely there’s money to be made… why won’t Adult Swim bring it back even though it’ll cost them nothing to do so? It must be personal. There must be something else going on here that we’re not privy to.

Still, we can hope… maybe Metalocalypse will return around the same time Tool release a new album.