Sons Of Butcher

If you're in Canada and you haven't tuned into to TeleToon on a Friday night at 9:30pm recently, I strongly suggest you do as soon as possible. The treasure you'll find in this odd, if not slightly inconvenient timeslot (during prime party hour, wtf?) is Sons Of Butcher a flash animated TV show that follows around 2 teenage brothers and their friend, who are butchers by day, and aspiring metal gods by night... and well, day.

The result is a halarious and well animated (well, except for each of the three main character's heads - each are true to life and acted in front of a green screen). Take the episode I caught tonight - the hijinks included one member being ostracized from the band as his sobriety came between them, and the front man in his never ending quest to get "labelled" (aka signed), finds himself ditching his bandmates in favor of fronting the newly signed "Fatbags". How far will he sell out in order to achieve fame? Will there be a Wayne's World-ish "I love you man..!" scene when he reuintes with his fellow bandmates? Will Ricky overcome his love of sobriety?

The voice acting is top notch and the clever writing is able to both poke fun at and pay tribute to Metal music. At times, the jokes and overall concept sounded like something my buddy Brynne would have come up with while back in his red mullet sporting, cheap beer drinking, shitty drum kit smashing punk house days.

Keeping in line of course, with bands like The Gorillaz and Prozzak, Sons of Butcher are also a band IRL, although with a much lower profile. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for their style, or whether or not the cartoon's popularity will increase their on stage profile, but to their credit, they were able to sucessfully pitch their concept for the cartoon to TeleToon and sell 13 episodes. Pretty impressive for industry noobs who met at broadcasting school and on the set of The Red Green show.

If you're interested, there's a trailer available at www.sonsofbutcher.com.