“Employed by Dethklok are a devoted army of black-hooded employees, who will gladly die or kill for Dethklok, and will not betray them even when mercilessly tortured by those who seek to thwart the band.” –Wikipedia.

For starters, I have to say that I have not loved a cartoon band this much since Jem - and that’s saying a lot. But a heavy metal cartoon band? “Now that’s just plain crazy,” you might think. But Dethklok is THAT good.

We arrived at the Showbox SODO to a line that stretched almost to the end of the block. Glancing through the crowd, I spotted folks clad in mostly black, chains, and tattoos galore; and there I was, literally, one of the two people not wearing black-although I was underneath my raincoat. At one point, the girl standing in line behind us remarked “Yeah, I am pretty tough… I’ve broken more bones than most boys.” Needless to say I started to feel a little nervous until we saw a group of guys walk past us, one of them proudly wearing a “Dio” (I kid you not) t-shirt. We had a good chuckle about the song, “Holy Diver” before the lady at the door mercilessly searched my bag.

My first impression of the place: other than feeling peeved that my bag had just been molested- it’s big, boxy, blatantly segregated by drinking and non-drinking age, and… very “new” looking. When we walked in the opening band, Chimaira, were a few songs into their set. I honestly don’t know what to say about them other than it was really um, heavy (remember people, I was here for the cartoon band). The folks near the stage seemed really stoked to see them though, which was nice.

I would estimate most of the crowd were under 21, because the area immediately around the stage was packed, and there was lots of slam dancing and crowd surfing, which made the decision to hang out at the bar for the remainder of the night much easier for us. There was also room enough to move around and get a decent view of the band (although sadly, most the pictures we took probably don’t attest to this fact because we were so far from the stage, which explains the obvious lack of pictures).

Half an hour after the opening band finished their set, the crew set up a video projector screen with all of Dethklok’s instruments, including the massively awesome double kick drum set belonging to Gene Hoglan, i.e. “Pickles the Drummer.” Soon the lights went down, and folks started cheering at the stuff on the projector screen, thinking Dethklok was beginning their set, but it actually turned out to be a commercial. I had to remind myself, after I booed the Army video game scenes flashing before me, that some bands, especially cartoon bands like Dethklok, kind of need sponsors. It would have been much cooler if the commercial had been for Duncan Hills Coffee though. Five minutes later, Dethklok -the real band- emerged, as images of the cartoon Dethklok played on the projector screen, appropriately beginning with the theme song (which looked a little like this).

There were two things I found especially impressive about this show:

1.The guys on stage, for the most part, played perfectly in sync with the band on the screen. It was also a trip to see the actual band performing the songs that we, until then, had only associated with cartoon characters.

2. The set was interspersed with snippets of the animated band hamming it up as they would on the show (at one point, the other band members try to convince a toilet-ridden Murderface that the show is not over yet). I guess you could say it was like watching an extended episode of Metalocalypse, but with live music in between the jokes.

Songs performed included “Go Forth and Die,” The Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle, “Murmaider,” Musta Krakish,” “Hatred Copter” and “Go Into The Water” - my personal favorite. And while no, we didn’t have to sign pain waivers to see Dethklok, the show was what lead singer Nathan Explosion would call “brutal.” And we definitely had a blast.

You read that right folks, the stars of Metalocalypse and the biggest metal band in the entire god-forsaken bloody universe, will be at The Showbox SODO on June 2nd  June 3rd now. Tickets go on sale April 19th, $22adv/$25doors.

We hope to be there and that we survive to tell the tale. The audience never seems to fare very well at a Dethklok show.