Return from Exile: How Extreme Metal Culture Found Its Niche with Dethklok and Postnetwork TV
Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 27, Issue 2, Pages 163–183 Return from Exile: How Extreme Metal Culture Found Its Niche with Dethklok and Postnetwork TV Joe Tompkins Allegheny College In the premiere episode of Metalocalypse, an original animated series entering its fifth season on the Adult Swim channel,1 300, 000 metalheads travel to the Artic Circle to witness Dethklok, “the world’s greatest cultural force,” as they perform a coffee jingle for the Duncan Hills Coffee Corporation. Despite adverse conditions and a mere single song set list, thousands of fans risk life and limb for the chance to witness the legendary death metal band as they perform a raucous musical ode to the virtues of “ultimate flavor.” As one reporter on the scene observes, “Never before have so many people traveled so far for such a short song.” In a further testament to the band’s outstanding popularity and market value, concertgoers eagerly sign “pain waivers” excusing Dethklok from legal liability in the all too likely event they are somehow “burned, lacerated, eaten alive, poisoned, de-boned, crushed, or hammer-smashed” during the show. Meanwhile, the performance launches the international coffee mogul Duncan Hills to monopoly status, “obliterating” the competition. When asked by news reporters if such an act of corporate sponsorship means that Dethklok is “selling out,” frontman Nathan Explosion growlingly rejoins: “We are here to make coffee metal. We will make everything metal. Blacker than the blackest black . times infinity.” Touting “the biggest
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