Article Metal Gets Animated

Hard rock and cartoons have gone together for over 30 years. The pairing first broke into the mainstream with the success of 1981's Heavy Metal and 1982's Pink Floyd's The Wall. John Schnepp, the director of Adult Swim's animated series Metalocalypse, told Fuse News about the influence of Heavy Metal. "It's an amazing cross-generational film that covers all of the history of music for adults who happen to like animation," says Schnepp. "[It's] a movie that has some nudity, violence, sex, and cool music and great storytelling." As the '80s and '90s progressed, it became more popular for rock bands to include animation with their music videos. When Linkin Park broke onto the scene at the turn of the millennium, they capitalized on the fact that two of the band members were also visual artists. Frontman Chester Bennington explains how the band put them to use. "Both Mike and Joe went to school for the arts. When we started working on Reanimation we kind of took the idea of taking not only the music and representing the music in a new way."

"Everything we do now seems to have some type of animated element," adds Bennington. In 2013, Linkin Park took their animation a step further when they released a video game called LP Recharge, along with an album of remixes that provided the game's score. The album debuted in Billboard's Top 10. "If you beat the game you get to unlock a new song," Bennington adds. But the most successful combination of heavy metal and animation has to be Metalocalypse, a series about the death metal band Dethklok. John Schnepp, one of the main creative forces behind the show, says, "Metalocalypse to me was always about excess. It's the richest band in the world."