Catching Up With... Metalocalypse's Brendon Small

Paste caught up with Small—one of the show’s co-creators and creative forces, and voice of Dethklok vocalist Nathan Explosion—before the band geared up for a second, 28-city tour with Chimaira and Soilent Green this summer.

Paste: What are your thoughts on the explosive popularity of the show so far?
Small: I think it's neat. I guess I just try to make the show not suck, and try to make the guitar playing not suck. That's my main goal. If it's popular that's great, you know? I like being creative and stuff, and if people like the stuff you're doing then you get to keep on being creative. That's what I'm in it for.

Paste: What about the tour? Last year you played colleges and then this year moving on to venues?
Small: Well, that was my hope anyways, to do venue stuff rather than colleges. I don't think that our entire audience is on the college campus. I think there are younger and older people that are digging the show, and, you know, college students also. This way anybody that wants to see the show can see the show, and it's a fun show. I really like how it turned out. It's gonna be fun and entertaining, and I'm playing with some really great players.

Paste: When you're on stage performing, do you feel like you're performing as Brendon Small or do you feel like you're Dethklok?
Small: I think we're basically Dethklok. [The animated band] is on the screen above us and we're making the music that makes Dethklok happen and I'm just a guy playing guitar.

Paste: Last year I made it to the show in Carbondale and it was amazing.
Small: Oh cool. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, all the shows are great. It's like a super fun thing to combine all the shows and music and all that stuff at the same time.

Paste: Yeah, it felt like being part of an interactive episode.
Small: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the way I wanted to design it was almost like one of those interactive rides at Disneyland or at Universal Studios or something like that. Where, as you know, it's kind of silly and stuff, but you're involved in the whole thing somewhat. The sales are going really well for the new one. It's not like it's a regular band or anything like that. First of all, this band doesn't exist. Not at all. We have a TV show, and that makes things a lot easier as far as like selling and marketing.

Paste: [Dethklok song] “Thunderhorse” made an occurrence on Guitar Hero 2, and no doubt became one of the most difficult songs on the game. Are there any plans to release songs for Rock Band?
Small: I have no plans at this time. What I'd like to do is focus on the Dethklok video game and see where that goes.

Paste: That was actually going to be my next question.
Small: Yeah, I can't talk much about it. It's in super-early stages. Before you called I was actually looking at the new Guitar World magazine where they transcribed “Thunderhorse”. I think they got it right. It's pretty accurate.

Paste: As far animation projects go, do you think Metalocalypse is the show you've always wanted to do, or is it just a stepping stone towards that perfect project?
Small: I don't know. I mean, the whole thing is—basically you're allowed to do what you want to do and not have somebody bother you and make you change things, and I'm in that situation now. I think TV shows are weird, and I don't think they should last forever. I'm not interested in creating an empire. Honestly, it's a very self-satisfying kind of goal. I wanted to do a show where I get to play my guitar a lot, and find a group of people that would help make the show look great. I don't think it's the be all end all. Film stuff would be the be all end all, but I'm not sure if that's key anymore. I couldn't have asked for a better project to be involved in.

Paste: You've toyed with the idea of a Metalocalypse film?
Small: Oh yeah, I mean, that'll either happen or it won't. It's all momentum. The whole thing about, like, if I start working on the film that means I'm gonna have to write the film and do all that stuff, and the TV show would have to take a back seat, and not be on the air for a year and half or so. We have a really small group of people working on the show. It's not that big a group at all, and each one of those people are a huge part of the show and they have a lot of creative input. That's the why we like them, because they are creative. When we were preparing for the tour we spread ourselves incredibly thin, and had to slow down our production schedule because we couldn't do that much stuff at once. All those logistics kind of come together. So, if you want to start doing more projects in the future, it'd be like “Oh yeah, I'd be able to make a film, but I can't make the TV show for two years.” You know, is that worth it? Possibly. If I'm gonna make a movie it's gonna rock. Don't quote me on this, but I'd like the movie to be good, and not to make just because we can.

Paste: As a TV writer, did [last year’s Writers’ Guild strike] affect you at all?
Small: No. I'm not a part of the Writer's Guild. The Writer's Guild doesn't cover animation. It had nothing to do with that. The fact that we were down the entire time was because of the first tour. The first tour was booked, and that's what screwed up our schedule. I'm not in the Writer's Guild. If I were I would have appeared at the strike, but I'm not.

Paste: Does Metalocalypse have a beginning, middle, and end to it?
Small: There's definitely an end. There are a lot of different versions to the end. There is a beginning, and you haven't seen that. The whole show starts right when the tribunal catches wind of who these guys are, and that these guys are dangerous. That's how we start the first episode, from the government's point of view. When you watch [season two] together like on TV, or on DVD, when it comes out, you'll see that the show is much more of an episodic sort of thing where you're following a much bigger story, and that story plans to continue after this season. Well, yeah, we'll see.

Paste: Any big plans for the remainder of season two?
Small: Yeah, there are lots of big plans. I can't really talk about it too much, but one thing that I can say is that we're going to try a couple of episodes that are a little longer then the 11 minutes and 30 seconds.

Paste: Like a half-hour special?
Small: Yeah, but when I say a couple I mean a couple. The show really works well in a longer format. When you're working on a show you got all your characters, you got all your action sequences, you got all your comedy sequences, and it's like sitting on a suitcase with too many clothes in it, and you're just trying to cram it all in there, shut it, and move it out the door. We have a hard time with that, because we have a lot of ideas. I'll write a script that's way too long because I can, but then we record it, and we edit it down, and then we start falling in love with it, but that's what happens when you like your show. I don't fall in love with stuff that sucks. I'm usually a pretty tough critic. I've been talking for a long time doing the half-hour because we have a lot of ground to cover.

Paste: How much of what you write ends up on the cutting floor?
Small: I have an episode that I'm looking at right now that's 18 minutes long. I wrote a 30 page script for 11 minutes. That's absurd. You'd think I'd get better at it as I continue the short format, but I keep writing more. It had a lot of really fun sequences in it, but I had to cut, like, seven and half minutes out of it. Sometimes I'll write a 15 page script and that'll cut nicely to 11 minutes and 30 seconds. It doesn't matter how much time they give you, you'll want a little bit more. If they gave me 22 minutes I'd be trying to cram another five minutes in there somewhere.

Paste: For the interested, but uninitiated metal fan, what would be on the Brendon Small Metal 101 mix?
Small: Um, let's see, what got me into metal? Metal is so different now. There are a lot of awesome metal bands. Anything Metallica. From ...And Justice for All I went to Master of Puppets. If you listen to Metallica's music it's like, “Oh wow, you're a thrashy, mean kind of guy.” Then you got really great chord changes, and really cool epic moments, and all the stuff that I like about metal. You can be as epic as possible. So, Master of Puppets, obviously a great one. Maiden's a really good starter, kind-of metal thing, because it's not too heavy, and really theatrical, and dramatic and fun. Any Iron Maiden. I think the one that got me was Somewhere in Time and then I went back and checked out all their old stuff. What else? Oh! Here's some cool stuff. There's a band that I like, and found in the past year, that goes by the name of Gojira. They're like French environmentalists, except that they rock. They're super heavy, have really great production, and there's music going on too. Not that metal has to be melodic in anyway whatsoever, because there's really ugly, like scary stuff too. Um, then you start turning into Cannibal Corpse and scary stuff.