Metalocalypse Co-Creator Says He's 'All But Finished' With Dethklok

Brendon Small, the co-creator of cult-favourite Adult Swim animated series Metalocalypse, has confirmed that a long-hoped-for revival of the series with the network is exceedingly unlikely.

Fans of the show, which follows the misadventures of a fictional death-metal band called Dethklok, have been kept hanging for a fifth and final season to the long-running series since it was first referenced by Small in early 2014. Throughout the series, music credited to Dethklok and written by Small appears, with three albums of the band's music consequently being released.

By October 2015, when Adult Swim hadn't been able to budget for the season and had declined a mini-series finale — thus leaving the show in limbo but presumed to have been cancelled — Small launched the Metalocalypse Now campaign, a social media movement to convince Adult Swim and US streaming service Hulu to jointly fund the project.

As Metal Sucks notes, however, a new interview from Metal Insider indicates that the effort has ultimately proved fruitless, with Small commenting, "I think I'm basically all but finished making Dethklok records, only because the network has been less than easygoing about lending out the name."

"The network was kind of dangling this final thing after [the series' 2013 rock-opera special] Doomstar in front of me and then they said they didn't want to do any more episodes," he continued. "I asked why not, and they said it was for financial reasons.

"Then the whole Metalocalypse Now fan campaign started and they got in touch with me and said, 'Hey, what can we do to save this show?' They were saying that they didn't have enough money, but I thought if we caused enough noise, some financial backers would show up. They actually did, and some people that were willing to offer just shy of 2 million dollars stepped forward and said, 'We would love to finance the show and do this final mini-series,' and then the network said, 'No, we don't want to do any more Metalocalypse at all,' and that was the end of it."

Small nonetheless remains committed to delivering some kind of closure for the show's long-suffering faithful — "I just can't tell you how," he says — but with his own musical pursuits in the fire (he's currently working on a follow-up to 2012 LP Galaktikon, fittingly titled Galaktikion II) and what he sees as baffling inflexibility on the part of Metalocalypse's network home, it will probably be quite some time yet before he figures that out.

"It turns out Adult Swim doesn't want anyone to have Metalocalypse, not even themselves," Small told Metal Insider. "They just want old re-runs.

"They paid for it, so they can take their ball and go home with it, and that's how show business works, for better or for worse. They just said a flat-out 'no', and they get to do that. And if I had paid for the series, then I would get to make the decisions, but I didn't pay for it."