The EM Poll

Metalocalypse Now

Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Gino Robair

           

Metalocalypse co-creator Brendon Small creates all of the music of the fictional band Dethklok in his home studio. In this interview, he talks about scoring the show.

Read the online-only supplement to this Brendon Small article here.

WEB CLIPS
Extended interview: learn about Small's inspiration for music, character voices, underscoring, and more

When you give the animators a click track, is it an exact length of time?

I'll sometimes give them a bed of music to work with. Except for a couple of situations, like the main theme and the coffee jingle, most of the songs allude to being longer, and we do a hard cut or a fade as we pull out of a sequence. I do as much as I can in that amount of time. I'll arrange it and try to make that part sound good.

What do you deliver to them? A Pro Tools file?

I usually do most of the mixing of the songs myself. I'll commit to all that stuff here. I'll bounce down to either AIFF or WAV files. If I'm going to check it against picture, it's usually AIFFs, which work best in [Apple] Final Cut. If I'm going to a Pro Tools session, I'll usually use WAV files, and try to make it the highest resolution.

Does the mix include the voices?

I have to separate the vocals, because they have to have them on the dialog track. Sometimes there will be bad words in the vocals and I have to bleep them.

I was surprised to find that the profanity was still bleeped out on the season 1 DVD.

That was a budget issue. We would have to reexport all of the audio from the original masters at the production house, and they would have charged us more money. And we wanted to use the money on more animation and stuff like that.

Whose idea was it to put the guitar squeals over the profanity?

The Zak Wylde things? That was me and Tommy. It makes it more violent than it originally was. If it's the f word, we can use a little bit of the f, because it's shown late at night, and a little of the k sound, and it always has to happen right in the middle. We try to keep in what the word was. It becomes less funny when you don't know what the word is.

You can see the mouths moving, too.

You can definitely see the animated f sound.

Who were the characters of the band based on?

Nobody is based on one particular person. Tommy and I discussed a lot of archetypes. Like the really good guitar player, and the other guitar player who's not as good and is a second-class citizen. So in Dethklok we have the fastest guitarist alive and the second fastest, and that creates a little bit of friction. In metal the bass is completely mixed out almost all the time. So we have a self-hating bass player who's always trying to act like he's more important than he is. The singer is kind of a quarterback, and the drummer helps write a lot of songs. I thought the drummer should be able to do a bunch of stuff, like Roger Taylor in Queen. Even though it's not based on his personality, it's what he can do in the band and what parts of the songs he does contribute to.

Nathan has a sort of Danzig vibe.

Yeah, people thought Danzig. Honestly, we thought Conan the Barbarian would be an awesome front man. But the way that he moves we actually did base on a person: George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher from the band Cannibal Corpse. If you see Cannibal Corpse live, you'll know exactly what we're talking about.

For Skwisgaar, we created a blond Swede — a handsome guy who thinks he's the greatest thing in the world, with a little bit of Yngwie Malmsteen in his attitude. Toki is Norwegian to Skwisgaar's Swedish, pompous attitude. And, again, a second-class citizen in the same band.

You have rock-star voice cameos in the show, but they don't play on the soundtrack.

We hired the musicians to do voice-over acting only. I don't have the time to work back and forth with musicians when there's only a half hour to create something for the show.

And I don't want my name on the record too much. I'd rather have people think that the music was created by a cartoon band, not by people you recognize.

Gino Robair is the editor of EM.

Rock Around the 'Klok

Brendon Small describes the studio in the corner of his cramped apartment as “incredibly minimal,” but it's totally responsible for the brutal sound of Dethklok. “It's the ultimate in simplicity. Like something a college kid would have. It's just about instrument choice and consistency for the show.” His gear list includes:

Audio-Technica 4040 mic
Digidesign Digi 003
Eden Electronics WTX260
Gibson Explorer
Gibson HD.6X-Pro Digital
Les Paul

Gibson SG
Krank Amps (various)
Line 6 POD
M-Audio Axiom 49 and 02
Universal Audio 6176
Yorkville YSM1P monitors

Additional Resources

Brendon Small teaches the Metalocalypse theme

Brendon Small: The Thor von Clemson Advanced Fast-Hand Finger Wizard Master Class

BONUS MATERIAL
Extended interview: learn about Small's inspiration for music, character voices, underscoring, and more