San Francisco Bay Guardian: Are you a big metal fan?

Brendon Small: Yeah, I am. I mean, I have been playing guitar for 16 years. When you learn guitar, you basically learn through rock and metal stuff. The guy who taught me my first couple riffs was a big metalhead, so I learned a lot of metal. And you just start exploring stuff. It’s really cool, because guitar-driven stuff, if you know how to play guitar -- you’re listening to metal. My first riff that I learned was “Iron Man” on guitar. I just kept on listening to all kinds of guitar-driven stuff, like Metallica and Megadeth and King Diamond and Slayer. At the same time I was also discovering all kinds of guitar virtuosos, like Yngwie [Malmsteen] and Joe Satriani and things like that. And then I ended up going to music school at Berkelee College of Music in Boston.

The whole story is this: I went to music school, studied music and didn’t know what I was going to do with it, and kind of got sick of learning about music and started taking comedy and film writing classes at Emerson College, which is just down the street. They’re affiliated schools--sister schools. So I started doing stand-up and all that stuff, and kind of said goodbye to music for awhile. Then I created the first show, Home Movies. One of the producers was from a show called Dr. Katz. So we created this show together. So I wrote all the music for Home Movies, it was very different from Metalocalypse. Then it ends.

Then I get together with my friend Tommy Blacha who was the only guy in comedy who would go and see death metal shows with me. He was really funny writer -- he’d written for Conan O’Brien and a wrestling and stuff like that. Weird stuff.

SFBG: Wrestling? WWE stuff?

BS: Wrestling. Yeah, he was a coordinating producer. He would come up with the long-term stories and be a live producer. He’d travel around with all these gigantic wrestlers and stuff. Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. He worked with, what’s his name? McMahon? He’s got a couple pretty fascinating stories.

But he and I, all we would do is talk about metal, like Cannibal Corpse and Nile and Arch Enemy, and all the black metal Norwegian stuff. And at some point I was like, "I can’t believe we’re not making this a TV show. Let’s go pitch this." So I called the head of Adult Swim, Mike Lazzo, and I said, “We’ve got a TV show. It’s going to be about a metal band, like a death metal band or black metal, I’m not sure -- old-school, kind of thrash stuff. But it’s going to be about a metal band, and there’s going to be tons of murder. And we’re not interested in having anyone understand anything anyone says." That was the pitch. To his credit, he said "green light."

SFBG: One of the things, for me, that seems to make the show so awesome, is that metal is so humorless. On the one hand it’s cool because it’s so pure: I can’t really think of any metal bands that are trying to be ironic, like the whole indie scene.

BS: Yeah, I’m so sick of irony in music. I like a lot of indie rock. I like music where people write good music. But I totally agree.

Clean-up on aisle 13!

SFBG: Metal, on the one hand is hilarious. I mean, bands like Cannibal Corpse are ridiculous, but they’re not trying to be, you know?

BS: The way I look at it, they give the audience exactly what they want. Bands like Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, or Cannibal Corpse. Once you get pass the irony of people putting on a very serious show -- because it’s fucking bad-ass -- I look at it this way: You go to a Cannibal Corpse concert, and they look like five serial killers on stage. And their songs are about murder, about how you -- how you-- are going to die. You’re in a pit of zombies, you’re bent over backwards and you’re going to be fucked with a knife. Those kinds of things. And I’m like, “Oh, fuck yeah.” It’s like listening to a bunch of little slasher films, if you think of it that way. That’s the same kind of appreciation I have for horror movies. In a serious way, and in a very kind of fun, “fuck yeah,” audience way, where you see in a movie a face splatters and the audience goes “Yeah!” You know what I mean? It’s that kind of dynamic. It’s not an ironic thing, it’s like -- fuck yeah! You’re doing what I want you to do, good. I love it because there’s still a lot of people who don’t really get metal and kind of make fun of it. It’s like when you go and see a Broadway performance of Rent or Wicked or something. It’s like laughing at the fact that they learned their lines and got in character. It’s the same exact thing -- these guys nail their parts.

I mean, we work with Cannibal Corpse. We work with tons of different bands. And they’re nice guys with good senses of humor, they’re huge comedy fans. They know their comedy history, they know their Monty Python and Spinal Tap and all that stuff. They just like to have fun.

SFBG: What do you do with Cannibal Corpse?

BS: The lead singer, George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, does voiceovers. That’s one of the things we do on the show, like when we first started the show we were like, “Wouldn’t it be cool to cast metal band heroes of ours as actual actors?”

SFBG: He doesn’t have a main part, does he?

BS: He has a recurring character in season two. His character’s named the Assassin. But we also have Metallica.

SFBG: Yeah, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett are in there right? What do they do?

BS: They play a lot of different characters. We came up to San Francisco and we just brought up like six scripts. There’s one where Dethklok tries to do comedy, and they have an old, salty teacher. That’s James Hetfield as a pirate, doing the voice. And he’s great. He did a great job. People think, “What, did you hire a ringer, a professional voiceover actor?” No, we’ve got these guys who are blowing off steam in between rehearsal sessions and just having fun.

SFBG: Are there any famous guys that play Dethklok?

BS: No, Dethklok is mostly me and Tommy. I play the lead singer, Nathan Explosion, and Skwisgar Skwigelf, and Pickles the drummer.

SFBG: How do you spell Tommy’s last name?

BS: B-L-A-C-H-A.

SFBG: That’s kind of a metal name in and of itself.

BS: Yeah. He’s Polish. The Polish people are metal. He plays Murderface and Toki, the other guitar player. And then we have Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell.

SFBG: Wow! Malcolm McDowell’s in there? Who does he play?

BS: We killed a character at the end of season one. And we have a darker, more evil character replacing him, it’s Malcolm McDowell in season two.

SFBG: And who is Mark Hamill? He’s the manager, right?

BS: No, that’s also me. All the stuff that’s mostly band stuff, me and Tommy do. Because we like to re-do stuff a lot. We like to throw scenes away and do improv, so it’s better for it to be two people. That was our thought for casting -- we didn’t want to get people that were hard to pin down and were really busy.

SFBG: So who does Mark Hamill play?

BS: He plays Senator Stampingston, who is in the tribunal, the group that watches Dethklok.

SFBG: Who’s Dr. Roxo?

BS: Tommy is Dr. Roxo’s character, I am Dr. Roxo’s singing voice.

SFBG: Dr. Roxo’s fucking amazing.

BS: Probably one of the better episodes of the show has yet to be aired, but it will, and it’s a Dr. Roxo episode.

DETH TO FALSE METAL!

SFBG: How is this tour with Trail of Dead going to work?

BS: First of all, I didn’t plan anything. It’s all in somebody else’s hands. I found out through a fan that Trail of Dead was going to be on the show. But as far as what we’re responsible for, I have a band of incredibly talented musicians -- the drummer who played on the Dethklok record, Gene Hoglin, he was in Strapping Young Lad, the band Dark Angel, and Death. He’s just an amazing drummer. And ex-Frank Zappa guitar player, Mike Neely, is playing guitar. We’re dividing up all the super shred lead things between us. I write all the music, by the way -- I don’t know if you know that. And play it all for the show. I program all the drums in the show, and I play everything. ‘Cause I went to music school. It all paid off. So I can write death metal.

SFBG: Who’s the bass player?

BS: The bass player is Brian Beller, he’s an amazing bass player. He just got off tour with Steve Vai.

SFBG: Are you guys going to…

BS: We’re not going to dress up like Dethklok. Basically, we’re supposed to sound like Dethklok. It’s going to be more like Gorillaz -- we’re going to have a huge animated show. We have a huge animated show, and the whole idea is it’s going to be like a big, stupid Disney ride, or a really silly Universal Studios or Star Tours kind of thing, where you get welcomed in and the tribunal starts off the show. There’s a little bit of a story, and then we start, and there’s videos that we’re playing to, a live picture. And playing to click tracks and stuff like that. And it should be fun and just ridiculous. And there’s lots of, again, murder, and I don’t think you’ll understand a thing we say.

SFBG: So there’s going to be a huge cartoon going on behind you?

BS: There’ll be a gigantic projector screen, which, if it all works out, will be above us, and we’ll be kind of like, backlit, so if you really want to watch our fingers you can. It’s almost like when you go to a ballet: there’s a pit orchestra, and the show’s not happening there, the show’s happening onstage?

SFBG: So you’re not going to be impersonating Nathan Explosion?

BS: We’re going to hold hold off dressing up like them until the beginning of Dethklok on Ice.

SFBG: Is there going to be live, some sort of Gwar-like thing, with actual actors with their heads exploding kind of thing?

BS: No. We don’t have the budget for that, or we would totally do that. I’m actually about to go and hang out Gwar. They’re playing at the Warfield tonight.

SFBG: Oh, you’re in the city?

BS: I [got] here yesterday, I emceed a Guitar Player Magazine event.

SFBG: Oh, the Guitar Hero thing?

BS: It was so cool for me -- I’m such a guitar geek -- that I got to hang out and meet Joe Satriani and Nuno Bettencourt. I was a kid in a candy store. For me: awesome. It was crazy. All these guitarists go up and play, and they’re all insanely good. For me, just watching guitar players play, and be self-indulgent -- which I think is awesome -- it’s what rock and roll is about. Stupid self-indulgent lyrics and long guitar solos, I don’t care. That’s rock and roll as far as I’m concerned.

SFBG: Has there been a love-interest episode for anybody in the band?

BS: You know what? There is one. Episode 16: Girlfriendklok. You’ll see how Dethklok approaches the very notion of a girlfriend. I remember watching some comedies where they just shoehorned a love interest in, because, “Oh, that’s part of storytelling--there’s got to be a love interest.” No there doesn’t.

SFBG: That’s totally not metal.

BS: It’s not metal to show affection for people.

SFBG: But, then again--therapy isn’t metal, and comedy isn’t metal.

BS: That’s where the brutality comes in. One of my philosophies of the show. Not only is our show about a metal band -- actually, it’s not even about a metal band. Our show is about celebrityism. It’s about: what if the biggest celebrities in the world were a death metal band? So we’re making fun of celebrities and our fascination -- our country’s fascination -- with them. What if they were, like, the most brutal, slowly ruining the earth with everything they do? And there’s murder surrounding them constantly? And within that, it’s like, “Oh, I get it. Now it’s talking to me.” Because I think there’s brutality in everyday life that you don’t really notice, that goes by. Just shit like…it’s not a Cannibal Corpse lyric, it’s not “Fucked with a Knife” or anything, but there’s shit that really fucks up your life all the time, and that’s fuckin’ brutal. Like, I don’t know. Like humidity. Like, I know a guy who’s got to commute for an hour and a half to get to work everyday, and that’s fuckin’ brutal. Shit like going to the dentist, going to the DMV. Waiting in line. People not making up your mind in front of you at Starbucks. It’s fucking brutal. That’s all a metal song. Everyone of those are lyrics.

SFBG: That sounds like a great concept album.

BS: Yeah, that’s why comedy is brutal. Dying on stage is brutal. Therapy -- learning about yourself is brutal. All that shit is brutal. It may not be technically metal, but it certainly is brutal.

Dethklok play with …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Nov 2, 5-7 p.m., free. Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. Free. http://events.berkeley.edu/