Dethklok National College Tour Stops at UCLA, 11/1/07

’Dethklok!’What Dutch death metal ubermensch at Adult Swim thought this shit up! Funny ha-ha! Not to be missed.

AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD opened and peaked and tapered off with a twenty minute set. Or was it forty minutes. I’m not knowing these guys from a hole in the wall, so take this with a grain of salt, but… eh.

Interim moments were about the Guitar Hero 3. MTV chestnuts like Living Color’s “Cult of Personality” are now party and parcel of the game. (Some GH3 god took obeisance from the crowd for getting up on stage and scoring three hundred unbroken perfect notes. Singular funny “booOOoo” from an irony-minded drunkard after the man left.) Virgin had two screens that posted text messages and photographs from crowd folk with cell access, and I think they were giving something away. Did anyone sign up for their non iPhone-having thing? Resentment at the fact that they sponsored is what I remember about their outfit.

Now, this cartoon METALOCALYPSE is not one I have ever seen prior to this event, but I will be downloading it. Funny fuckin’ ha-ha. Death Metal sent up with full marks. A five member virtual ensemble like Gorillaz made from amalgams of Danzig, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, you name it. Sort of like Voivod in their undead Vikingness. The zombie-filled, anti-authority message of DETHKLOK is such an unbelievably hyperbolic tribute to the genre, nay, to anyone who ever wished a MegaDeth tee shirt brougth to life, that it really has to be seen. The voices and band behind the cartoon play DETHKLOK metal and despise their fans as they summon Mustakrakish or tell the tale of the death mermaids, or just pay their taxes. The backstory is Adult Swim 101: DETHKLOK is “the world’s greatest cultural force” (RE: METALLICA) and rack up a body count at every show. All DETHKLOK crew and legal teams wear executioner’s hoods. And yet there are bearded philosophers and army generals trying to stop them from converting the world into metalheads, “The Tribunal”.

Get your feet wet. Wet with Blood. See DETHKLOK on three screens at college campuses across America.