Drew Ailes called up comedian, actor, and metal aficionado Brian Posehn in June to discuss his new Relapse Records release, "Live In: Nerd Rage," among other things.

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I shot the rest of my video this morning at my house. We shot most of it last week at a studio and today we're shooting a couple of shots in my living room and in my garage.

For "Metal By Numbers." It'll hopefully be out when the record comes out around July 11th, for Headbangers Ball and Fuse and all that.

I don't know. That's the idea, I would love to go in with Scott Ian maybe at some point and do an interview together. He and I are planning on doing more work like this in the future, so whether we do it for this video or just show the video, who knows. That's kind of my dream, to be on the 'Ball. I love that show going way back to '89 or 88', whenever it started.

When music sucked.

It makes me very happy, yeah. I mean, there's some bad stuff out there, but there always was bad metal. I just hope it doesn't hurt the good metal like it did back in the day. No, I think it's really positive and I'm loving just in my neighborhood there are young headbangers who are seeking out the old stuff. I see kids in Megadeth shirts and stuff like that, and that makes me really happy. It seems like for a while, like, I know some of these old thrash bands and they weren't drawing kids. They were just drawing the same old fans.

Yeah, exactly. I'm friend with the guys in Death Angel and you'd see pockets of young kids at the show but for the most part it was old guys in their 30's and early 40's like me with their pot-tits and old black t-shirts.

[laughs] Right. Lately at shows I'm seeing more and more kids like at the last Anthrax show I saw in LA that they headlined with the old line-up. It was crazy. It was packed with kids, it was like 1987 all over again. It was nuts.

I...um, I was at an Anthrax show in Chicago and I had to watch over another friend who was a little boozy and had never been into a pit and was totally fascinated. I just went in to kind of watch him and make sure he didn't get hurt. I will when I have to, but it's not fun for me anymore.

Yeah, and I don't want to get sweaty. [laughing] You know? There's guys up against me...

Yeah, in my video and in the song "Metal By Numbers" I talk about that a little bit and about the pit. Like, c'mon, put your shirts back on, it's kind of gross. You can be enjoying anything and then some guys back rubs against your arm...[groans]

I've seen that fight.

[laughing] Right.

Well Matt, the head of Relapse, came to me. It was weird and it worked out perfectly because I had put out my CD on my own. It had sold well and was selling out actually, but I realized I should maybe find a label. I had been talking with Scott Ian about writing songs together, so I decided I should approach a metal label because there's a couple of jokes on the record and that's already part of my audience. Some of my friends like David Cross did a record for Sub Pop, which made sense for him because that's also kind of his audience, so it felt for me that it was like, well, I'm going to call Prosthetic, I'm going to call Roadrunner, and I'm going to start to look into it. I even had my manager already getting on top of it, I was like, "alright, lets find some metal labels." Matt from Relapse called me before we could call them and before we could call any of the big ones. He just said, "hey, I want to do it," so it was like, "alright, we'll stop looking, that's the perfect label."

Oh yeah, yeah. They would've been in the top five for sure. And he called me on his own. We were coming to Philly with the Comedians of Comedy tour so I met him in person and he was such a good guy and it seemed like a good fit. That's how it happened. Then I got in the studio right away with Scott Ian once I knew I had the label and somebody that would promote the metal songs.

Well, with the Anthrax story, that was me going by myself to see them one night, they were playing at The House Of Blues probably six or seven years ago now, maybe closer to eight. Anyway, I just go like I've always gone, I've seen Anthrax a million times and I've paid for them since 1984. So I just go and their roadie sees me at the bar and goes, "oh my god, Scott's like, a huge Mr. Show fan. Do you know him?" I said, "no, no, I've never met the guy." And he goes, "did you pay to get in here?" "Yeah, of course I did, everybody did." He's like, "aw, they're gonna shit," and he brought me backstage before they went on and we became friends pretty soon after. I became friends with the roadie too and just started going to shows. Scott and I had a ton in common. He was a huge comedy fan and a metal fan, so we just talked about metal and comedy and became friends.

I think he had a lot of fun. I just saw him last night. I was hanging out with him and Sebastian Bach of all people.

[laughing] Yeah, that guy. And "Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde"?

I think it was just called "Jeckyl".

With Death Angel, they actually remembered me because I used to go to their shows back when I was really young and had talked to Mark, the singer, over the years, going back to the late 80's and early 90's. Then I showed up to one of their shows and, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but it was another thing like that where it was like, "hey, we know you, you're on TV. You like us?" and I'm like, "yeah, I've always liked you." And from that I stopped having to pay to see them.

I don't know, it seems like MTV just started showing it again on MTV2, so that's kind of a good sign that they know there's an audience for it. If someone got a petition going to get it on DVD I'm sure that would be the push that's needed. They just need to be aware that there's an audience. They kind of forget about things and once they know there's an audience and they could make a little money off of it, they'd probably do it. I know that happened with another animated show I did, Mission Hill. There were petitions online and it finally got released on DVD.

Well right, we were on WB years ago...

Yeah, but that's where it started six or seven years ago. I was so proud of that show. I just thought it was so smart and funny, and no one watched it. WB probably aired maybe half of the ones we shot and then I guess now Adult Swim started showing it.

Oh man. That was a pilot we had shot for Comedy Central and we had a couple of fans in the LA offices and I think ultimately what happened was a couple of things. They told us that the reason they didn't pick us up was that they didn't have any money that season because they had just spent a ton of money at the time on That's My Bush, the Matt and Trey live-action show that didn't do very well for them that they had dumped a ton of money into that. They claimed poor, they claimed they were broke, and you know, well, if that's true then why didn't you then pick it up the next year when you didn't have any shows going? So I don't know, there must've been something else or somebody at the network who didn't totally get it. In their defense, the pilot isn't perfect. The pilot is the 22-minute episode that people have seen. I don't love every minute of it, I think there's a lot of stuff that we learned from it, but I also think there were some great jokes and really funny characters, and people who are now popular. The fact that me, Sarah, and Patton were all on one show together, if you pitched it now it would probably go. If you went to Comedy Central now, certainly then, and even I bet you most networks if we said, "here's your three leads," we could probably get it going. But we're all pretty busy and Patton and I love still writing together, that was a lot of fun for us to write these two characters. Not only was it fun in the room but we had fun getting on stage. That started as a play, actually. The first time we did it it was he and I improvising. We were doing a show and we were told we couldn't do it, which is this long story, but uh, we had this script from an old Jerry Lewis movie and we were doing it live and these lawyers showed up and said, "no, you can't do it," and we had a full audience there. So all of us, it was myself, Bob Odenkirk, Patton, David Cross, and a bunch of our other friends just started improvising and would do little scenes because we had 200 people who had paid to see us that night and now we weren't allowed to do the thing we were going to do. So Patton and I did these two nerd characters, which is easy for us because we're both nerds, and we'd have this fake argument using real references, and that's where it came from. From there we had so much fun. We wrote three plays, we did a trilogy, like the Star Wars trilogy. From there we got the Comedy Central deal. He and I still talk about doing stuff with those characters. We're actually working on a movie pitch and hopefully someone will listen to us. I think we definitely have people who will listen to our ideas. We have a lot of doors open now that weren't open maybe five years ago.

Right. And the great thing is now people kind of know our names. We've been around for a long time and I especially have always felt like, and have gotten it from people, the, "hey, you're that guy from that one thing," and "I know you from your voice because you've done this thing and that thing," but now people are starting to put the name to the face. The same with Patton, too. We're both experiencing that.

I'm checking out Lambgoat right now as I'm talking to you.

Yeah, I'm surprised I had never heard of this before today.

"Lambgoaters that are full of shit," that's one of the threads.

I just saw one thread called, "I would bang this chick."

That's funny. [laughing]

Um...the script is hilarious. It's a ping-pong comedy. I probably can't give away the plot, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I don't know what Patton does, but I have a pretty funny part.

Hmm. He might be one of the other ping-pong guys.

Yeah, it becomes that. It spins out and goes crazy. I play a techie like in a lot of those big Armageddon and that type of movie, the guy wearing the Hawaiian shirt that sits in front of the computer while everybody else is freaking out. I'm that guy. I pigeonhole myself into a lot of these nerd roles that are a lot of fun.

Oh, totally! Pigeonholed is probably not the right word because that sounds negative, but no, I love it. It actually has gotten to the point where people write parts for me, or sometimes they can't get me and I'll get a script that says, "a Brian Posehn-type". It's like, "oh, sweet."

It's really cool. It's really cool that I've become a type. People will use the word typecast and it's got this negative connotation and meaning, but to me it's not negative. To me it's like, well, I'll work for a while because I've got this niche that people think I'm good at, whether or I am or not I would never say that, but it seems like I get these calls and it's fun. The fact that writers are thinking of me when theyre writing something is really flattering. I can sell the shit out of it, you know.

Very, very, rarely. Usually now they'll be the kind of hecklers that think they're helping. I've had it before where you'll say something like, "so I met the band WASP," and people will go, "yeeahhhh, fuck like a beast," and it's like, well, they're not trying to fuck me up. They're enjoying what I'm talking about and they're connecting. I'm not the kind of comic who makes a big scene and makes them feel like assholes unless they're being assholes. If somebody truly is fucking with my act and really fucking with my timing, I will tear into them or tell security to escort them out. I've done it for so many years that I can gauge what kind of action to take as it's happening. Should I just ignore this guy and do my next joke or is this something I have to take care of? A lot of comics when they're first starting, and I don't know if I've ever really heard anybody really talk about it, but sometimes you can hear people heckle but not everybody in the crowd can. So what I've seen happen is that the comic kind of snaps and everybody in the audience is like, "what the fuck, what is he talking about?" Because as a comedian, you're so in your head. You're looking at everybody anyway and you can hear everybody. You can hear them way better than they can hear each other, you know what I mean? So you're just hyper-aware of anybody who's not digging what you're doing, so much so that it can hurt you if you let that get in your head or if somebody is quietly going, "well, this guy sucks," and you're like, "oh, you think I suck?" [laughing]

"Where did that come from?" Yeah, it can be bad and get you in a hole that you can't dig yourself out of. Like I said, I don't really get that anymore. Even when I'm not with Patton, if I'm doing headlining shows on my own, for the most part people are there to see me and the ones that aren't are usually having a good time or maybe they're not completely enjoying me, but I'm not doing so badly that they would yell, "you suck," at me. That seems like something that happens to people that are too green.

Right, right. Hecklers definitely sense that when you're kind of new to it. They smell your fear.

Not in a long time, and even when I am in Omaha I do okay. I did Omaha a few years back and had a great time and I went to Peoria, Illinois last year and killed. No, I'm at the point my career where I'm going to drop fans but I'm also hopefully going to win everybody else over or most of the people over. Plus, I'm not political so I don't really make enemies like some of my friends do on the road. If I play a red-state, they're not going to hate me because I don't bait them. It's not part of my act. I have a couple of jokes where you're like, "oh, that guys kind of liberal," but you know, I don't harp on it and I don't run out saying anybody who's not liberal is an idiot, which is an easy way to get hecklers.

I know what you're saying. I'll take a good joke where ever it came from. I won't take somebody else's idea. I won't take it from another comedian. If my wife says something that's easily adaptable then I'll ask her and I'll use it. Most of my stuff comes from my reaction to things, at least that's the way my act is now and the way it's grown. It's all me. It's all my perspective. I've heard this from people, and to me, this is a sign of a good comedian. I've had people tell me that I write jokes that not anybody else could easily do. They're not ideas that other people could steal or adapt. Maybe the premise is something that other people could think of or relate to, but the way I get to it and the way I talk about it and the way I deliver it is mine.

Exactly, I love doing everything I do. I love acting, I love writing, I love doing stand-up. Now I love doing songs with Scott. So for as long as I can do all four of those things, I'll do it. Lately my focus has been on all four. Whatever that week I have on my plate, I'll concentrate on that and get that task done, but I love doing all four. I'm really happy that I can do that. As far as what my favorite is, you know, stand-up was my first love, but there's a huge satisfaction that comes from sketch writing. I wish I was doing that. I haven't written sketches in a long time and I write feature-length movies now. That can be a frustrating business to be in, but you know, it's something that comes easy to me. I wrote as a kid and it was always something I wanted to do and have a passion for. Hopefully, I'll get a movie on the screen the way I wrote it down. So far I've had jokes in movies and I've done rewrites and that kind of stuff, and it's satisfying, but it's not as satisfying as being on stage and killing with a joke you wrote. It's a totally different beast and they're all fun for me. Ultimately as long as my dogs have dog food, that's what matters. Whatever pays the mortgage.

Well, right. Sitcom actors at my level make a lot less than you would think we do.

[laughing] No, I've never had that.

[laughing] Right. No, I've never had that. There was a kid in my neighborhood and I don't know if they thought I should have a nicer car than I did, but somebody wrote to me on my website going, "hey, I saw the car you drive, why do you drive that?" I have an old SUV, a six or eight year old Ford Explorer, and I couldn't tell if they were saying that I should have a nicer car or that they hated me because I'm driving an SUV. I still to this day don't know. Yeah, I mean, people who aren't in the business automatically assume that anybody on TV is making money hand-over-fist. That's why I have to do commercials and stuff like that. If I could live off of the Just Shoot Me money for the rest of my life I would. I wouldn't be talking to you, I'd just not work. But I have to work.

Well, I would say it's not gay-ass, but ultimately it's hard to turn things down when they're offered. That was a thing, again, going back to what we said earlier, that was a thing that was written for me. The people at the ad agency wrote it with me in mind. Like I said, that's flattering and really hard to say "no" to.

Right, and it wasn't the least funny commercial ever made. Honestly, I wouldn't take a commercial where it was me going, "hey, you should try this product," and say it right to the camera with no funny. I wouldn't take that. But if it's something where it feels like it's in my area playing the nerdy office worker or being sarcastic or deadpan is something I do. It didn't feel like a huge sellout move to me. I sold out in 1994 when I did Star Search, so it's not like I'm very punk rock anymore.

He was a drunk mess.

Well, no, I won, so when you win he calls you over and does a little bit of banter with you which is prepared. I had to run through it with a producer, so I tell him what I want Ed to ask me, and I can't remember the specifics because it's so long ago, but he, of course, butchers what he's supposed to ask me and I already had my answer prepared so as he's asking me this fucked up version of this question, I have to, in my head, figure out how to answer him and still make my joke work. It worked, but it was a lot of stress for twenty seconds of TV.

No, no. It was the booze talking. That guy reeked.

No, he was sweating whiskey.

[laughing] Yeah. And tell your friend to fuck off, by the way.

[laughing] No, I get it. Most people have been really cool about everything. There's some hardcore comedy fans where I go to some of these comedy sites and if you think metal boards are fucked up, comedy nerds, they would like if if they only performed for them. They don't want me to have a house. They don't want me to be able to pay my bills. They want me to only write jokes for them and come over to their house.

Yeah. Anything you do, you know, like David Cross doing Scary Movie 2. You get fans insane about that. To this day they probably don't know why he did that, and I know exactly why he did that. It's a chunk of change that he couldn't say no to.

Well, there's been movies where I've said yes to and situations where somebody tells me it's going to be one way and, you know, then it turns out...I didn't sign on to do a shitty movie, I signed on to do a good movie, but it just didn't work out that way. Whether the studio got involved or the director didn't know what he was doing or whatever, that's what made it go bad. It's not like we sign on to do crappy shit. Crappy shit. Wow, that was nice.

[laughing] Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Really articulate.

[laughing]

Oh, yeah.

Oh man.

Well, it's the same thing that was wrong with stand-up in the 1980's and the 90's. It's the network people, they're not looking for the best comedian. Luckily, they don't call it, "The Best Comedian," they call it The Last Comic Standing. They're not telling you that they're great. It's just...they're looking for characters. They're looking for people they can build a sitcom around. They do it the wrong way, I think. They're not looking for purely funny people. Look, Seinfeld wasn't a character. Seinfeld was a funny guy. I don't think they get that. They're looking for Roseanne. Definitely that's why they took that woman you're talking about, the pregnant older Jewish woman, or are you talking about the one with the leather face?

There were a couple people who had no business being in that contest.

I know what you're saying, man. I'm totally obsessed with it by the way, because I'm part of that world for one, but also it's just good TV. I find myself shouting at the TV going, "that's not funny, what is he doing there?"

Yeah, Dat Phan. He won.

And more importantly, he wasn't a good comic. He was too green to be on the show...there's a lot of that. He stole Margaret Cho's act.

Yeah, me neither. We used to be friends but, meh, ech.

[laughing] Those bridges were long burned.

Lets get this on record: I think I kick ass, I rule, and I'm fucking sick. So everybody's right.

I am who I am. It's me on stage with all my kick-assness and all my ruleness and all my sickness on stage. I leave it there.

Well, man, I think you know what I'm going to say.

Well, for sure, but to me, Nickelback is like Creed where it kinda doesn't effect me, because it's not truly metal. The stuff that I hate is the stuff that's deemed as metal and then not. It's fake or it's coming from the wrong place, or wrong for me, you know, where it doesn't feel right. Like the Blink 182s of metal, you know, Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, or Gaytreyu. See what I did? I'm clever.

I think its...Ay-trey-you, yeah, yeah, but I like to say Gay-trey-you. You know, that stuff doesn't do anything for me and it actually makes me mad when I hear it. That's what influenced Metal By Numbers. It's all that stuff where it just feels false. There's probably bands out there, and maybe some of these bands could say to me, "dude, this isn't false, this is what I feel, this is me."

[laughs] Yeah. I won't say that, you did.

[laughing] It seems fake, and that's all that matters. As a listener, if it doesn't grab you and it doesn't appeal to you, it's your opinion. To me, all that stuff...I don't like it. I'd rather hear something heavy or something with balls or something that doesn't sound like every other thing. I hate a lot of these bands, some of the ones I mentioned and not even them; just the thing of, okay, this is how the song goes: here's the Iron Maiden part, here's the sing-a-long chorus, here's the screaming part where you can't understand what I'm saying, here's the gay whiney part. Put these parts together and it's metal-by-numbers.

It's formulaic and it feels too easy and it feels too fake.

And they sell a lot of records, so I'm wrong.

It's what fuels the underground, though. I think there wouldn't be an underground if everybody who was great was rewarded for it and everybody who sucked went unrewarded. Then there wouldn't be a place for underground music. Does that make sense?

To answer to...

Exactly, yeah.

Well, right. You know, there probably wouldn't have been a Megadeth, a Metallica, or an Anthrax if there hadn't been a - and I don't hate all of their stuff, but I hate a lot of it - but if there hadn't have been a Motley Crue, there wouldn't have been an answer to Motley Crue. I think it's important and also, stuff isn't for everybody. The guy who likes Atreyu isn't wrong, he just likes them. I can't get mad at him but I won't listen to it. I've given bands like that a chance. I listen to everything and I'll check it out when I see somebody's sort of bubbling up and being mentioned in the places I go. I'll check them out and I won't just listen to one song and go, "gay," and never listen to it again, I'll listen to a couple of songs and give it a chance. I've been pretty open-minded about metal but a lot of metalheads aren't.

No, I gotta say I'm kind of set in my ways. For me, it's gotta be the old school roots. With my metal I really need choruses, hooks....Slayer, one of the most brutal bands in the world, writes hooks. Sepultura writes hooks. Some of these other bands don't write hooks and I don't love them. Some of the sludge or grind, I've given it a chance and I just know it's not for me. This'll probably piss some people off, but like, a band like Meshuggah - I get it, and I'll play it, but I don't find myself going, "I have to listen to Meshuggah right now," because there's just something that doesn't grab me. It's heavy and I get what I'm supposed to like about it.

I need a hook, man. I need a verse-chorus-verse. The stuff that appeals to me with the newer stuff is probably the more commercial, but I don't think that's bad. Commercial isn't necessarily bad. Maybe when it's too slick or feels like it's made to be commercial, that's when it sucks. I love Lamb of God. Those guys write big hooks. I love Shadows Fall. I love Mastodon. They're pretty fucking underground in comparison and doing their own thing, but they still write verse-chorus-verses and they have big, big, fucking riffs and just stuff that I can sink my teeth into. Stuff that I want to hear over and over again and stuff that when it gets to the solo, I'm by myself in my car headbanging or going, "yeah!" I like Dragonforce. A lot of people probably think they're gay but there's parts about it that just make me smile. I don't love all the vocals and I don't love all the keyboards...

Oh, for sure. Iron Maiden changed my life in the early 80's. Before I found thrash metal I was into Maiden.

They don't do it for me. I've even given them a chance.

Yeah, maybe I haven't heard the right song. I bought a couple of records and put them on my Ipod but I just don't find myself going, "alright, I gotta hear that right now." Maybe I just haven't found the right song.

I get that feeling. Iced Earth I think are like that.

Yeah, there was some stuff on that record that was like, "really, dude? Alright."

I love it, I love it. I can't help but laugh when I hear it. Some of the lyrics they sound like Tenacious D. Like, "are you really serious, it kinda sounds like you're joking." They're singing about the Revolutionary War and stuff like that...it's a little funny.

I don't know them. They're power metal, also?

There's some of those bands I haven't ever heard, like Stratovarius I've always heard are good...

But yeah, it's the big hooks. I do listen to some hardcore, but again, it's gotta grab me. I'm open-minded, I'll give anything a listen.

Heh, yeah. It was a long time ago. I was fucking a girl to Pro-Pain.

I don't know the name of it...this was 1990...probably pretty early, one of their first ones. But just...it wasn't her thing, it was totally my thing. Like, "I gotta put this on 'cuz I love this groove." I just felt bad. I wanted to pull out and turn it off and go, "hey, I'm sorry about that." It was really aggressive kinda...

Yeah, yeah, they're all mad about something while I'm trying to screw this girl in my apartment. With my wife, I would never. She doesn't like the really heavy stuff. So I could probably put it in her to Scorpions but if I put on Sepultura she'll go, "what are you doing?"

[laughing] The keytar?

He really said that?

[still laughing] Well, he's right.

The keytar is ridiculous.

Okay, so what am I answering?

Okay, I would much rather hang out with Dave Mustaine.

[due to a technical malfunction, the interview ended here]