[atlantaprog] Re: Dethklok

Oops--never sent this.   Well, better late than never...

On Dec 14, 2007, at 11:52 AM, Allen Welty-Green wrote:
My 19 y/o death-metal-fan son dragged me out to this show last night. For the uninitiated, Dethklok is the fictious band from the Cartoon Network's show Metalocalypse. They did a *free* hour long show for a limited audience (first 450 people) last night. The *real* musicians, incl. singer/composer/co-creator Brendan Small and guitarist Mike Keneally, perfomed live mostly in the shadows while their animated doppelgangers performed onscreen. It was hilarious! Spinal Tap for the death metal crowd.
Or maybe a mirror-image; if you watch *Metalocalypse* (which I did for the first time visiting a new friend in Jax Beach a few weeks ago), you'll notice that Dethklok is portrayed as not merely a superstar band but a sort of *world power* (to the point where there are scenes of a SPECTRE-like organization discussing How To Stop Dethklok), not a band in apparently terminal decline, like Spinal Tap. (Most viewers fail to understand that *TIST* isn't about *all* metal, just one band having a hard time of it. It does say something about the *industry*, though.) One of the episodes I saw was centered around a one-song gig in the Frozen Wastelands of the North (sold out, of course) to be used as a commercial jingle.
I daresay all those guys bashing into each other in the pit had no clue about the irony!
They probably don't care, or else they're in on the joke. (Post- modernism finally reaches metal!)
I doubt I would have appreciated the music had I simply heard it on CD, but to see the insane video animations, incl. some of the more hard-to-decipher lyrics, cast the whole spectacle in a new light for me. And the Small/Keneally twin-guitar work was really cut above most music of that genre.
It takes a lot of skill to play that stuff, especially if you're a drummer. Another vacation story:
I'm in a garage listening to drummer Lee Harrison and guitarist Mark English from the long-running death-metal band Monstrosity practicing for an upcoming gig. (Mark, a friend of mine, has played on tours with them before, but for some reason he's never been able to appear on an album by them until now.) Lee's drumming seems almost superhuman--I can't believe anyone could play that fast--and I tell him so. Lee turns to Mark and says, "Fooled another one!"
He says there are drummers in the scene that are better (or at least faster) than him, but I'm not sure it's possible to go much faster. Mark has long been an extreme shredder, too; even now, after having laid down the guitar for about three years in the '90s, he's still at "basic shredder" level.

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