Uh Huh

I've been tinkering with the idea of buying the Dethklok album, featuring music as heard (and in some cases seen) on the cartoon Metalocalypse. I'd have bought it already but my iPod is plumb full and I can't bear to part with anything that's on it, so I maybe have to wait to buy it until after I get an 8-gig Nano (I currently have a 2-gig Nano with a horribly defaced screen and a giant smear of hardened super glue on the back).

Metal purists seem not to see the humor (and the music) in the cartoon. They either don't see it as the satire that it is, or they think they're being made fun of in some exceedingly cerebral way that they don't really understand, or they think the cartoon plays into metal stereotypes. With a title like Metalocalypse, what were they expecting?

The short version of the show is that the death metal band Dethklok is the most powerful cultural force on the planet and the ninth largest economy in the world. Various governments have come together to try to stop Dethklok, which they regard as a bona fide threat to national security and world peace. But at the same time, the five members of Dethklok are apathetic, entirely oblivious to the gruesome slaughter that seems to always follow them everywhere, and quite naive about the way the world works (except for Pickles, the drummer, who at least knows what a supermarket is).

The music is pretty good, but not in large doses. There isn't enough variation from song to song to make me want to listen to the album from end to end, but as long as I can pick and choose, I like it. I particularly like "Go Into The Water" and "Birthday Dethday", though it's hard not to like "Murmaider" because of the scene where the general looks at the record producer's face and gasps "Good lord, man, what did they do to you?" And the producer snarls "It's called metal, dumbass!" Highly unfortunate, though, that "Sewn Back Together Wrong" never made it onto the album.

Stylistically, it's more or less old-school death metal, not quite as grindy as early Carcass and not as muddy as a lot of Florida stuff. It's a bit like Descanting the Insalubrious but thrashier, and with weird whisper-growled vocals that are quite unlike anything else I've heard. The problem is that my iPod is full, and will part with music I already have on it only after whining. So what can I part with? I never developed a full-blooded taste for Carnage, and I rarely listen to Ulver because I really can't stand that one ambient number where they recorded the guy running around in a field, but I do like the last song on the album - "Bergtatt", if you must know.

Anyway. I think that's about enough time wasted on a satirical cartoon about a death metal band that doesn't exist.