Villains Month: Metal-Masked Assassin

While the animated series Metalocalypse is first and foremost a comedy, it has a fairly dense and complex mythology (which I may have written about somewhere). Indeed, as the clueless members of Dethklok stumble irresponsibly through their lives, many sinister figures in the background observe them and seek to manipulate them or bring about their demise. Of these, the most direct and appropriately brutal is the Metal-Masked Assassin.

The Metal-Masked Assassin (also known as the Man with the Silver Face, and whose true name is still unknown) is the brother of Agent 216, a government agent hired to kill Dethklok. Of course, due to their preternatural luck, he was killed in the process. He was brought in by General Crozier to seek revenge, and from that point dedicated himself to Dethklok’s destruction. He is shown to be incredibly strong and tough, highly skilled with weapons, and able to pull off people’s body parts with his bare hands. He is apparently extremely stealthy and hard to track, skilled in making terrorist-style explosives, and both clever and treacherous. In his first encounter with Dethklok, he is defeated by their straight man/manager Charles Offdensen, and from that moment on, swears vengeance against him as well, taking his defeat rather personally. He went on to form the anti-Dethklok terrorist group known as The Revengeancers, who have caused a great deal of damage and murdered numerous people.

While it could be argued that a group of people who are out to stop Dethklok have legitimate concerns, given the band’s disregard for law and logic, and the casual carnage that occurs merely as a result of their presence, The Metal-Masked Assassin is nothing resembling a sympathetic character. When we first meet him, he is vivisecting another person, presumably for no reason other than sheer sadism. When trying to reach Dethklok in their first encounter, he makes his way through a crowd of fans by pulling out a pair of blades and beheading everyone in his path. He is exactly the sort of insane murderer who tends to pop up in death metal songs, which is appropriate enough, considering he is voiced by Cannibal Corpse frontman George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher. He is nominally motivated by the death of his brother, but it seems more likely that the Metal-Masked Assassin was merely given an outlet for his unending rage and bloodlust, one which he took to with gusto, and then stuck with as a result of being defeated. He does seem to hold a particular hatred of Charles Offdensen, a much smaller, more intellectual man who still managed to outclass him in their first encounter, and has since sworn to crucify Charles and make an example of him in front of the world, a threat I don’t consider to be hyperbole.

The Metal-Masked Assassin has proven adept at forming alliances with people who hate Dethklok, and staying one step ahead of both the law and Offdensen’s attempts to find him. He has managed to use weapons of super-science as well as serve as an effective cult leader for the now-feral survivors of his nearly successful attack on Dethklok’s home. He also destroyed a goodly portion of Australia (offscreen, but still). Most recently, while he was defeated once more in personal combat by Charles Offdensen, his organization managed to capture both Toki Wartooth and Nathan’s girlfriend Abigail. Fans have long clamored for the MMA and Charles Offdensen to have a final showdown, and it seems that they are moving inevitably toward this as the series comes to its impending last season.

While he is not the greatest evil in the series (that honor is reserved for the mysterious Salacia, or perhaps Pickles’s lowlife brother Seth), the Metal-Masked Assassin has certainly done the most damage to Dethklok over the years. More than any other villain, he has made it personal, whether by cheating in his second duel with Offdensen and nearly killing him, burning Mordhaus to the ground, or by having his ally Magnus Hammersmith stab Toki. He’s the sort of terrifying bastard I love to hate, and it will be eminently satisfying when he finally goes down.