Brutal Youth: The Comedy of Brendon Small

By: Brian Heater

“There were two things I was doing when I was a nervous, shy 14-year-old,” explains Brendon Small. “One was music, the other was comedy.” In many respects, the artist hasn’t come all that far in the past two decades. Twenty years later he’s still juggling those two passions, albeit in the form of a popular animated series on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Small’s Metalocalypse is weird and violent and wonderful animated crossroads of black humor and death metal—in short its just about everything your average red-blooded adolescent American boy is looking for in late night television programming.

The weekly 11-minute show revolves around Dethklok, the heaviest and most popular metal band. Like Home Movies, Small’s previous Adult Swim show, he co-writes and produces music for Metalocalype. “Home Movies was for me when I was eight,” Small continues, describing his first TV show starring a youthful orange-haired filmmaker of the same name. “[Metalocalypse] is for me when I was 14, 15, discovering music. It’s a crucial age, and you’re developing music and most of the time you’re developing it through choosing music. When I got into Guns N Roses when I was 14-years-old, I was defining who I was as a kid. If I turned on a TV show when I was 14 that was funny and violent and they played fast guitar and Metallica and King Diamond did guest voices, I would be like, ‘this is a show that I will take a bullet for in the future.’”

When a documentary based on Paul Green’s School of Rock Music was released in 2005, Small felt himself once again channeling that inner awkward 14-year-old. “I bought Rock School when it came out and I had a complete connection with the guy,” explains Small. “I wished that guy was in my life when I was a nervous, weird, awkward 14-year-old who was falling in love with the guitar. I wish I had someone who was kicking my ass, saying, ‘go up on stage, go play. It doesn’t matter if you screw up, just do it.’ I see Paul doing all of that stuff, and these kids are gaining this incredible amount of confidence. That’s a huge thing to me. Guitar gave me confidence that I didn’t have in real life, as a teenager. When I was behind the guitar, I was much funnier and had a lot more confidence.”

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A friendship blossomed between Green and the grownup Small, and the Dethklok’s creator happily signed on as a “guest professor” for a tour with some of Green’s all-star students. “This is kind of my way of taking a vacation,” says Small, who at the moment is largely consumed by the production of Metalocalypse’s third season. “When I do Deathklok stuff, I’m the leader, it’s my responsibility. I’ve got to do all of the growling death metal vocals and it’s really difficult to play guitar lines at the same time. This is the first time in a long time that I just get to play guitar. For me that’s a vacation.”

This live show, Small is quick to explain, isn’t really about him at all. “I think a couple of venues put pictures of Nathan Explosion, the lead singer of Deathklok up. I don’t want people to go there thinking it’s going to be Dethklok stuff. I’m going to be doing more Dethklok shows. But this show, in my opinion, is not about me. It’s about what Paul Green is doing with these kids.”

And while the focus on Small’s fictional metal band will be minimal, he happily assures fans that Green’s students will still be sufficiently brutal. “I said ‘let’s throw in a Slayer tune and see what these kids can do.’ And the kids just rip it. Watching kids play metal is really entertaining.”