Zak Fay drove four hours from Michigan to get to Northwestern on Sunday. He came here to watch a band that doesn’t really exist.
Fay and more than 500 other people came to Ryan Family Auditorium to hear the music of Dethklok, the fictional death metal band that stars in the animated show “Metalocalypse” on Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. Sunday night’s show was the last of the Adult Swim Presents tour featuring the bands Dethklok and …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.
“My band was practicing and one of our drummers said ‘Dethklok’s on tour,'” said Fay, a Western Michigan University sophomore. “That was today so we drove for four hours and came to the concert.”
“Metalocalypse” is a late-night Cartoon Network show centered on the exploits of a death metal band called Dethklok, which in various episodes has summoned a troll from a lake in Finland, spent half a year recording an album at the bottom of the sea and, most dauntingly, attempted to shop for its own food.
The concert, which featured music from the show performed live, was coordinated by A&O Productions. The Adult Swim Presents tour started Oct. 29 and played 11 other free shows at campuses in the West and Midwest.
A&O chairman Alex White said A&O and Adult Swim were both interested in bringing the tour to Northwestern. White said Adult Swim wanted the tour to end in Chicago and A&O wanted to bring a different kind of music to campus.
“We do these large concerts,” the SESP senior said. “We really haven’t done a Dethklok sort of hard rock band.”
Dethklok’s recent Billboard-charting “Dethalbum” features songs titled “Bloodtrocuted” and “Murmaider” (short for Mermaid Murder). The concert’s opening act, Trail of Dead, is an indie band out of Austin, Texas.
Trail of Dead warmed up the crowd as its singer Jason Reece walked over the crowd on the top edges of their seats and rolled around in the aisles. As they played, the audience chanted for Dethklok. Trail of Dead left the stage at the end of their set, knocking over their drum sets and throwing instruments on the ground.
Dethklok fan Alfredo Arostegui, of Manitowoc, Wis., said Trail of Dead’s performance did not change his unfavorable impressions of the group.
“I heard them a long time ago,” Arostegui said “I didn’t like them then and I still don’t like them now.”
The audience got out of their seats and started headbanging the instant Dethklok took the stage, standing in Ryan Family Auditorium’s rows the entire performance.
The live band, led by Metalocalypse co-creator Brendan Small on vocals and guitar, played in near-darkness. Cartoon videos played in sync with the music, showing scenes such as a possessed corporate suit murdering his rivals for “Employee of the Month.”
Vanessa Diaz, who works at the Red Door Spa in Evanston, was among the first in line to buy merchandise after the show.
“Oh my God, they’re amazing,” Diaz said. “Whatever they have here, I’m going to buy it.”
Most bands brought by A&O perform in Patten Gym, but because A&O will be using Patten when OK Go performs Dec. 5, the Athletic Department withheld permission for its use Sunday, White said.
“We’ve been talking to Adult Swim about this program since the summer, but Patten has tons of demands from coaches given the practices in there,” White said. “We couldn’t have it for two days in the Fall Quarter.”
The concert was moved to Ryan Family Auditorium, and representatives from the tour’s production company came last Monday to ensure it was an appropriate venue, White said. Adjustments to the stage layout were necessary to fit the bands’ equipment onto the smaller stage.
“I think it worked out way better than it did in my head,” White said after the concert. “It’s really crazy to think about this death metal band on the same stage where at 8 a.m., a Ph.D. will be giving a lecture to students.”
Small summed up the evening in character as the band’s sneering lead singer Nathan Explosion.
“It was a pleasure to come to your miserable college and play in the smallest room ever,” Small said.
Reach Michael Gsovski at [email protected].
