by Taylor Lieuwen
Daily Lobo
The Adult Swim Presents tour will banish students' Monday blues with indie rock and heavy metal.
Dethklok, from Adult Swim's cartoon show "Metalocalypse," and indie rockers And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead kick off their college campus tour 7:30 p.m. at the SUB on Monday.
The concert is free for UNM students.
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Dethklok is the focus of an animated series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Created by Brendan Small and Tommy Blacha, the series chronicles the exploits of an insanely popular metal band.
"Metalocalypse" has been described as "'Spinal Tap' meets 'Scooby-Doo' meets Norway."
Within a week of the group's September CD release, the album made it to No. 21 on the Billboard charts, a great success for a fictional death-rock band.
"It takes most death-metal bands about one year to accomplish what the Dethklok 'Dethalbum' did in three weeks," spokeswoman Maria Ferrero said.
Dethklok has also brought success to TV shows focusing on rock stars' day-to-day lives. Blacha said he and Small are metal fans.
"We had a simple premise, which was: What if a death metal band were one thousand times bigger than the Beatles?" he said.
The band and show poke fun at metal artists. But Blacha said he does so out of love and respect for metal.
"It's almost like when you make fun of your parents," Blacha said. "You love 'em, but you make fun of 'em."
Students have mixed feelings about "Metalocalypse."
"It's pretty funny, but it gets kind of cheesy sometimes," student Matthew Mitchell said.
At the concert, the band will play behind a screen so it doesn't give away the mystery behind the cartoon characters, Blacha said.
"Did you ever see the live-action 'Flintstones'? They had millions of dollars, and they couldn't make cartoon characters look right," Blacha said.
And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead is more established and less satirical than Dethklok. The Austin, Texas, band isn't influenced by death metal, but band members have been known to destroy their instruments on stage.
Blacha said this rebellious attitude is part of what gives rock 'n' roll its appeal.
"It's just kind of about being disaffected, so it's not real cynicism in that way," he said. "It's just kind of about being a big baby, just being able to (expletive) on everything, you know. I think there's some kind of uplifting feeling in doing that."
Adult Swim Presents: Dethklock and And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
SUB Ballroom
7:30 p.m.
