Brendon Small is one of the creators of Adult Swim's Metalocalypse. The animated series has a rabid following of fans, obsessed with the epic-but-goofy misadventures of "the most popular band in the world." said Brendon Small, "An extreme death metal band. It's about our love for metal, combined with a bizarre comic book atmosphere. At its core the show is about celebrity-ism, and the kinds of people we look up to, and could possibly be dangerous."

A goood portion of Small's work on Metalocalypse is writing and recording all the music for the show's fictional metal outfit, Dethklok. In Metalocalypse, the band is a five-piece; in reality, Small is Dethklok, doing all the parts himself on very tight deadlines. "The reason the show is what it is is because we didn't need that many people to do the show, the music..." According to Small, bringing a full-size band into the mix would be counter-productive, and too expensive.

"The whole thing about the gear that I use is that I can write and record as quickly as possible. It's just me, it's not exciting at all. I have a dog there!" (In the studio)."

The challenge of Metalocalypse is composing new, original music on a regular basis. For composers like Small, pressure drives performance.

"It's funny, I don't think I can do anything unless I have a deadline. Every show promises a new song, and there's a score on top of it, themes and songs and little cues. Sometimes I'll write 17 to 20 cues of music that have nothing to do with metal."

How does he come up with new, innovative ideas "on-demand"? Having the right recording gear is a good start, but good composers also rely on a set of mental tools.

"I interned at jingle houses when I was getting started, and it was fun watching these guys come up with music on the spot and have to bid for jobs. . . each one of these writers, I noticed, had a little bag of tricks. They had a certain chord grouping that they liked. I would pick out things that I liked, little chord changes that I could use. I developed my own for Dethklok, and it's very simple. The best thing you can have is that bag of tricks. I feel I can write things pretty quickly.

Even with the bag of tricks, there are plenty of technical issues to overcome. One challenge of the production is creating the appropriate metal drum sound; Small prefers Reason to get the job done. The use of sequenced drum tracks may bring scorn from metal purists who believe that a "real" band playing heavy music should stick to using a real drummer, but Small's recordings are convincing enough to bring Dethklock to life every week.

"I use Re-Drum on Reason, and use a Rock Kit Five and EQ the double kick to make sure they are very 'present,' then use the reverb, then go straight into Pro Tools from there," he said. "It's funny, the way a lot of Metal drums are EQed, they take a lot of low-end out, and a lot of people are using MIDI triggers live and they sound exactly like some of the drum samples in Reason."

"So it's funny sometimes, real drums are trying to sound like fake drums in some way. Plus the samples in Reason are very good. The only reason I'm using these drums now is that we couldn't lock down a drummer in a kit every week."

For guitars, Small chose the Line 6 Floor Pod, but he sometimes prefers to run signal into a Krank cabinet. He says he doesn't rely on compression or a large collection of plug-ins. "I do a very simple thing for every song. I track two or three guitars on every song, hard left, hard right, and then sometimes one right down the middle. I'm tuned down to a C tuning, so it's very simple."

With each episode's work contributing to an ever-growing collection of songs, could an actual album by the fictional band be forthcoming? Small admits a Dethklok disc is definitely in the front of his mind. "With all the recording that I'm doing, I consider these songs demos for an album that will hopefully come out sooner or later for the show, which will be recorded much better than what I'm doing now."

Will the "real" Dethklok become as wildly famous as the current version? It's impossible to predict, since the notion of a Dethklok tour is practically out of the question. Small says the amount of time and energy needed to do that, combined with the demands of the TV show, would just about do him in. While the option of a "cartoon tour" similar to the one pulled off by Gorillaz is a possibility, who knows? In the meantime, Metalocalypse was recently renewed for a second season; Brendon Small has plenty of work cut out for him.