Performance Klok

"Performance Klok" is the seventh episode of Metalocalypse. It aired on September 17, 2006, on Adult Swim.

Synopsis
After an onstage fight, Dethklok decides to get a therapist to help them with their band problems. Their therapist helps them through their issues while getting closer to the band for his own personal gain.

Band conflict
While performing at a Dethklok concert in a city near Machaerus, Jordan, Skwisgaar accidentally causes an electrical shortage by stepping on a plug connected to the machines on stage, resulting in a very violent on-stage fight between the band members, and their fans suing them over damages worth 16.7 million dollars. As Dethklok nurse their wounds at Mordhaus, Offdensen appears and announces that he's decided to hire a therapist for them in order to prevent future stage fights.

After learning of the stage fight, the Tribunal sends in Dr. Johnathan Twinkletits, a former member of the band Amazelingtons who, driven mad by the breakup of his band, disappeared for ten years before re-emerging as a therapist with extreme methods in dealing with his patients. The Tribunal hopes that Twinkletits will treat Dethklok to the point of permanent separation.

Therapy and banana stickers
While an unhappy Dethklok listens to Twinkletits lecture to them about their current "problems", Skwisgaar makes a rude comment about him and is promptly slapped hard in the face, much to the shock of his friends. Twinkletits warns that if one band member makes a mistake, Dethklok stands to lose everything. After witnessing a typical session in the recording room where Skwisgaar deliberately insults Toki by describing his guitar skills as "unplaying a guitar", Twinkletits has a reluctant Toki show off his "creative voice" by having him sing, which he does only after he is yelled at.

In the dining hall, while the band members are having lunch, Twinkletits reveals that he has made himself a member of Dethklok and rewards Toki with a banana sticker from a storage lock on his belt. Murderface asks if he can have one, and upon being refused, throws a tantrum then leaves. Later Twinkletits interrogates him, forcing Murderface to relive a traumatic memory from the past when, as a baby, he watched his father commit a murder-suicide act with a chainsaw (in the memory, baby Murderface was too busy eating cereal to seem fazed by this, yet it was horrifying enough to make him wet his pants as an adult); for this, he earns a banana sticker.

Psychological validation
Over the course of the next several days, Twinkletits's therapeutic methods and banana stickers gradually cause the members of Dethklok to become nicer and friendlier with each other. One day, while making a phone call, Twinkletits unwittingly lets slip that he murdered the Amazelingtons with a pen after their breakup. A shocked Toki overhears this and informs his friends, who are incredulous at first until Nathan further confirms that he noticed that things had been "getting out of hand" after Twinkletits arrived. The band ultimately decides to fire their therapist, but Pickles reminds them that they won't get any more banana stickers.

Later, the band confronts Twinkletits to inform him that he is fired. Nathan reveals to Twinkletits how he found out that the therapist had been using banana stickers for "psychological validation," so they decided to get their own chest full of them without his help. At this moment, Twinkletits loses his temper and attempts to kill them. He slips on a banana sticker and falls out of the window and onto the ground, where he is mauled by the yard wolves. The band then begins to feel a little remorseful of the situation, when Pickles mentions that he is hungry. The episode ends with the eyes of Dethklok glowing red.

Guest voices
Jeff Loomis from the band Nevermore.

Trivia

 * This episode reveals how the murder-suicide of Murderface's parents played out: his father murdered his mother for giving birth to an ugly baby.
 * This episode is a reference to the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster, where one of the plot points is their therapist starts to believe he is part of the band.