Writer/actor/director/musician/et al Brendon Small would be a legend if he’d stopped with the creation of his Adult Swim animated series, Home Movies, in the early ’00s. Following it up with the heavy metal fantasy comedy of Metalocalypse secured that status for all time when it debuted in 2006.

Spotlighting the death metal band Dethklok, whose popularity makes them the seventh-largest economy in the world, Metalocalypse managed to skewer the music industry as effectively as Spinal Tap while also being a wild ride into interpersonal relationships, worldwide conspiracies, and a cocaine-addled clown based on David Lee Roth.

The series has been absent since its last special, The Doomstar Requiem, nearly a decade ago. It returns on Tuesday, August 22, with a feature-length series finale, entitled Army of the Doomstar, accompanied by both a soundtrack and a fourth Dethklok LP, Dethalbum IV. Ahead of its release, we hopped on the phone with Brendon Small to talk about Metalocalypse and its history.