Exclusive: The Post-Metalocalyptic Future Of Brendon Small

Louis C.K. has claimed divorce to be “magical”, for Brendon Small, it’s an opportunity to tell the story of “Triton”, a divorcee living in outer space and dealing with the fallout of a messy divorce. As a result, we decided to talk to Brendon about his new comic series as well as his sophomore follow-up to the self-titled Galaktikon album.

It’s not every day in extreme music someone, anyone, can walk away from a successful operation and be OK with it. Some, like former Devildriver guitar player Jeff Kendrick, would leave the pastures of extreme music in favor of a career in real estate. Mark Hunter, former frontman for Chimaira, left the scene and became a photographer. For Brendon Small, after coming to grips with the fact that Metalocalypse and Dethklok would officially be no more, is probably doing the path less traveled…doing it all over again.

Brendon’s newest venture, Galaktikon, like penicillin, champagne, and Elmer’s Glue, was really put together as a result of a myriad of circumstances coming together with the result being a more melodic death metal approach whence compared to the sheer brutality of Dethklok, “the first Galaktikon album happened as a result of me booking time in the studio to record Dethalbum II, but then Adult Swim’s legal team changing the dates on the release so I decided to use the already paid for studio time to use music I had written that I didn’t think belonged on a Dethklok album. There’s kinda more going on with Galaktikon than in Dethklok”.

That’s a brave statement to say, Dethklok is one of the biggest selling death metal bands of all-time aside from Cannibal Corpse and has toured the world over with a visual aesthetic that complimented the very successful Adult Swim series that had ran for four seasons. And while Brendon isn’t promising a duplication of his past experiences with his new project Galaktikon, it’s difficult for fans to not discern some of the similarities when it comes to comedy and world-building.

Set to hit comic shops on August 2nd is, in fact, is a visual companion to the first Galaktikon album, “people digest music different than they digest comics which is different than how people digest television. For example, in Metalocalypse, a certain part of a song may work twice, but a joke doesn’t work the same way twice.”

To showcase this point, Brendon is giving more power to the fans, wanting THEIR interpretations of his art and providing him feedback as to what they think both the music and the themes presented in the comics. The starting point for said art was the first Galaktikon album, featuring nine songs that are then divided into multiple acts that are then adapted to a six-issue comic series which relies less on the familiar Marvel/DC tropes and instead digs into the minutiae of a superhero. As Brendon pitches this idea to me, I can’t help but be thinking back to what Rainn Wilson said in the movie Super, where his character “Frank” tells Libby (played by Ellen Page) that the boring and more serious stuff that happens in comics happens “between the panels” with Libby noting, “we can do anything here”.

For Galaktikon, this perfectly applies,“what if Superman and Lois Lane were involved in a messy yet highly publicized divorce, and then Lois Lane was to get everything in the settlement only to saddle up with Lex Luthor”. For visual aesthetics, Brendon counts his influences among properties like Flash Gordon and the 1978 space opera, Star Crash merged together with the audio-scapes derived from ELO and Queen, “I really tried to cop Queen’s style in layering and production” Small elaborates, “some of these songs I didn’t know what they were gonna sound like but I reserve the right to make melodic songs and brutal songs. I know I’m not making Dethklok records anymore, so I really started to experiment on this record with going back and forth between being brutal and melodic. I actually thought I was going to be a more melodic on this record than I was, but the more that I experimented, some of the songs sounded better more brutal. Writing music is all about decision making.”

Regardless, Brendon has teamed up with some powerful personalities to get his content out there. For the comic, Brendon has tapped Eric Powell (The Goon),“ he really understands comedy and storytelling” and Albatross Funnybooks, and for the record he’s teaming up with the house that Anthrax built, Megaforce Records, who apparently have been very supportive with some of Small’s more risky ideas i.e. releasing a record with no lyrics “I want fans to figure it out for themselves” as well as album artwork that continues to display Small’s 70’s sci-fi affinity, “this is not just a comic book or a record, this is a narrative about a quirky superhero named “Triton” as part of a non-traditional story who has to deal with the repercussions of a divorce in outer space. Comparatively, it’s not like Spider-Man or Ant-Man, it’s more The Sopranos about flawed beings in outer space that has to deal with divorce papers, therapy, and squid beasts.”

Galaktikon II: Become the Storm hits stores via Megaforce Records August 25, 2017

Galaktikon #1 hits comic stores today

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.