DVD Junkie #2: Metalocalypse

If you're in your twenties and have had access to either a television or a computer at some point in the past decade, there's a good chance you've watched adult swim, the late-night block of unusual television aimed at that golden 20-30 male demographic. Adult swim has gone through many changes through the years, and today I'll be reviewing one of the most highly-evolved adult swim shows - Brendan Small's bite-size hardcore sitcom, Metalocalypse.

Adult swim cornered the late-night stoner market back in the early 00's (I hear we're calling it "the Naught-ies" now, what will they come up with next) with offbeat original animations and dubbed episodes of Cowboy Bebop. The seed for the spinoff network was actually planted half a decade earlier - coming from that bizarre Hanna-Barbera bastardization cum bewildering talk show "Space Ghost Coast to Coast", which in turn came close on the heels of the trippy MTV animation block "Liquid Television". For those of you who remember, back in the early nineties Liquid Television launched Bevis and Butthead, Aeon Flux and has the distinction of being one of the first times TV specifically aimed their programming at chemically altered teenagers who needed something to do after they'd run down their cassette tapes of "Dark Side of the Moon". It was a winning formula - and even back in pre-TRL MTV (which when I think back on it now seems sort of lawless and free - Kurt Loder reported actual news, MTV showed actual music videos, and MTV was like an awesome older sibling instead of some squealing soulless preteen) Liquid Television stood out as something different, something weird, and as something that resonated with small town younguns with nothing better to do than sit in their wood-paneled basements and watch horrifically distended people jumping through bleak, dystopian landscapes.

then and now... aww, now I've gone and made myself sad :(

Space Ghost Coast to Coast latched onto that early market, and slowly that early pioneer of the bizarre Adult Swim format cultivated those stoner kids into a powerful niche of the market, right as they were being alienated from MTV by the channels increased focus on new, more impressionable pre-teen (or ... ugh ... "tween") viewers. The kids who so desperately wanted their MTV in the 80's and 90's had now been flatly dumped by it, and were ripe for the next big thing.

As Adult Swim's market share grew, Cartoon Network, and specifically Williams Street (the company that develops the lion's share of Adult Swim's original content) realized there was real money to be made tailoring shows to kids zonked out of their minds on weed and cough syrup, so they gave Adult Swim a great deal of autonomy (even officially breaking Adult Swim into its own channel so that it wouldn't skew the ratings for kid-friendly Cartoon Network). Williams Street in turn started developing more of their own shows, expanding the Space Ghost formula into an entire line of sometimes downright bizarre shows. That format morphed and grew, and has now found a profitable and influential place with the youth - where those disaffected high-as-balls teenagers have moved from their friend's basement to their dorms to their very own couches with their very own bongs, watching adult swim the entire time.

In any case, the Adult Swim format is hard to pin down and even harder to perfect. it's either brain-poisioningly stupid or absolutely brilliant, with very little in between. The good thing is, when they do it well, it's very entertaining and appears effortless, even to those of us not high as a kite. The bad thing is, for every Venture Brothers or Harvey Birdman out there, there are something like fourteen "Tim and Eric Awesome Shows". Usually they're short-lived, and universally seem like they're a hell of a lot more fun to be in than to watch. Which wouldn't be hard. Sometimes it seems like the execs just throw whatever they can at the wall and see what sticks. I mean, their target demographic would literally watch a test pattern and be heartily entertained for 15 minutes anyway, so why not experiment? And in the same way experiments sometimes create the epic failures that make up much of Adult Swim's original programming, they also, once in a great while, create something truly magical.

This is what the average Adult Swim viewer watches.
(Oh look, Zombie, it's your new best friend!)

Before Metalocalypse, Brendon Small was better known in the world of Adult Swim for his series "Home Movies", which was one of the first shows aired on Adult Swim and follows the trials and tribulations of Brendon, an elementary school student and budding filmmaker who dealt with his (actually quite depressing, when you think about it) life by grabbing his mom's vhs recorder and making movies with his friends. As much as I'd like to think that Home Movies was 100% biographical, my trusty friend wikipedia tells me that the real Brendon Small actually had a lot more to do with music - attending to the prestigious Berklee college of music. Taking that and the fact that he plays a good number of instruments on Dethklok's songs, the guy isn't too shabby of a musician, and the fact that he created a show so firmly based in music comes as no surprise.

Metalocalypse is one of the later Adult Swim shows, and is definitely one of the places where the disjointed narrative format and ludicrously mundane plots combine to create the unexpected magic that Adult Swim is famous for. The story of the show is roughly this: The most influential band in all of history, which just happens to be of the soul-rending black metal variety and covered in spikes, called Dethklok, has their every move watched by a secret tribunal of world leaders. And that's basically it. The tribunal watches, and Dethklok does a lot of navel gazing and texting. Oh sure, every once in a while they awaken a hellspawn troll or cause the death of thousands through their elaborate (and spiky) stage shows, but the very substance of Metalocalypse is that there is none. The Hollywood ideal of incite>conflict>resolution is left by the wayside. This is nothing new for Adult Swim's lineup, but the way in which Small executes the show is just about flawless.

*sigh* they grow up so fast...

Metalocalypse knows itself and its own potential in a way that not many Adult Swim shows can pull off - the characters are fully formed, the style is rock solid, and despite the apparent lack of forward motion, upon watching both seasons as whole works, there is a definite sense of trajectory. Side characters like Dr. Rockso, the rock 'n' roll clown (who, as you soon learn, does cocaine), have actual arcs through multiple episodes, and even though it is definitely a show meant to be watched out of order, without continuity, it shows a fundamental maturity that many adult swim shows lack. You care about the characters in a way that you're never even allowed to on a show such as Sealab 2021 or Aqua Teen Hunger Force. and also, unlike these shows, the watchability is not diminished by sobriety, which gives it a serious advantage over its more disjointed cousins.

But one of the best things about Metalocalypse is the fact that it has made metal accessible to just about anyone, regardless of personal music tastes. Personally, metal has never been my forte, honestly. I've always known as much about metal as I know about Mixed Martial Arts fighting and French New Wave: i.e., just enough to get me laid. But metal has never been that far from my heart either - from my brother's earnest garage-band practice sessions, to the long-haired, black-shirted metalheads that dotted much of my early love life, to the truly awesome music videos that come from the genre. While not a fan, I am a friend and sibling of fans, and have grown up with an interest in and understanding of the culture that goes along with it. I may have some predisposition to enjoy this show because of my anecdotal experiences with metal and its resulting culture, but still, I have seen people who think Metallica is too hardcore for their tastes become fans of the show, and not in spite of the music that is so close to the show's core.


Metalocalypse is metal taken to its distant yet logical conclusion, and paints a world that has been depicted in music videos for years - Metal is king, and all the world bows before it. As a complete universe, it has a smack of real fanboy glee about it, actually. One thing you can tell about the creators of this show is that they had a hell of a lot of fun creating this metal universe - the attention to detail, the inside jokes, the sly poking of fun at the stoic Scandinavians - not only did they know what they were talking about, they really enjoyed talking about it too.

Dethklok itself is a warped composite of many different bands in the metal and hardcore worlds - there are theatrics and all manner of musical styles that Dethklok touches on. And Metalocalypse is structured similarly to one of those "Hard Day's Night"-esque band vehicles - just about every episode has a song that is performed in a music video style and the song ties in with the plot. Just one aspect of that they poke fun at, which I'll take a minute to explain, is Scandinavian Black Metal - a genre that is not so much misunderstood as truly and abjectly pretty terrifying when you get right down to it and in real life has involved murder, burning down churches and all manner of crazy stuff. There are many different styles of black metal, of varying intensity, but for those of you who didn't have the experience of growing up with an older brother or the luck to be considered irresistible by every barrel-chested guy with an unruly goatee and a slayer t-shirt within a five block radius, here's an example which should give you a good introduction to Scandi black metal - Dimmu Borgir's "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" (Slightly NSFW, if a brief glimpse or three of a topless woman on a chain or a guitar solo that rocks so hard it ends the goddamn world isn't kosher in your workplace):



Now mind you, ye uninitiated in this darker side of rock, this is the melodic end of black metal and is honestly on the lighter side of the genre. Metalocalypse takes these theatrics and turns them into something truly magical - the "videos" involved in each episode are clever pastiches of these styles - using popular metal video elements like 1-2 frame alternating cuts, meat lockers, bold colors, the undead, and buckets and buckets of bloody violence.

Metalocalypse is worth a watch, even if you don't have any stake in Adult Swim or the bizarre animations that have so marked growing up in the current generation. Actually, I'd go as far as saying Metalocalypse would be an excellent entry point for someone looking to start watching the Adult Swim animation lineup (the Venture Brothers is an excellent place to start as well), and as a parting gift, here's another awesome metal video: Lair of the Minotaur - "War Metal Battle Master" (NSFW if your boss has something against hot topless zombies or sepia gradient filters):



The second season of Metalocalypse was just released last week as a soul-crushing DVD, with a lot of extras and all sorts of hardcore stuff for $20.99 on Amazon. The perfect Christmas gift for grandparents, young children, or your local youth pastor. It can also be seen most nights on Adult Swim in a rotating lineup.

Also, for those interested, a huge 10th anniversary boxed set of Home Movies has been released for the holiday season on Amazon for $99.99.

DVD Junkie is a weekly review of TV Series on DVD. Kosmic has the most packed DVR you ever did see, and agrees that Bloodrucution makes an awesome song name.