Interviews

Alex Alereza - Nekrogoblikon 'Friends In Powercore Spaces'

Will Oakeshott

Feb 18, 2025

7 min read

“You are only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” – Robin Williams.

Without doubt this prestigious Academy Award winning actor and comedian possessed more than just a “spark of madness”. Arguably, the Chicagoan’s improvisational skills in delivering his diverse range of characters and stand-up comedy performances were more similar to volatile wildfires in their illustrious lunacy. Nevertheless, one of the messages that can be interpreted from this scintillating statement is to embrace that spark of crazed creativity; because its potential to combust into an incredible inferno could be just an absurd happenstance away.

California’s melodic death metal comedy sextet Nekrogoblikon were spawned from a rather eccentric spark of madness by founders’ vocalist Tim Lyakhovetskiy, and guitarist Nicky “Scorpion” Calonne – both of which have since exited the band. They self-produced and self-released their debut album Goblin Island in 2007 and it was positively received by critics and fans in smaller niche circles. Nekrogoblikon’s charismatic capacity though, was soon to be discovered and launched into another universe that was beyond the six-piece’s own fantasy.

‍Brandon Dermer, a highly sought after writer/director/producer responsible for film clips by Every Time I Die, Panic At The Disco and Blink-182 as well as the series What Would Diplo Do? Starring James Van Der Beek; not forgetting the very well received feature film I’m Totally Fine – happened across Nekrogoblikon by chance quite some time ago which triggered his own “spark of madness”.

As longest-serving member and gleeful guitarist Alex Alereza describes, ‘Goblikon’s global quest properly began through Mr Dermer’s steering.

“Honestly, our career as a band really is thanks to Brandon discovering us.” Alex admits with an infectious smile and energised gratefulness – “Because we were a band for about six years, just kind of known locally and on MySpace and all that stuff. By the time we met him, we already had two albums out, but we didn't have a lot of traction; we kind of started as a joke. We weren't really a goblin; we didn't have any shtick. We were just six guys who were essentially like: ‘Hey it would be funny to do a bunch of metal songs about goblins’ you know? It wasn't thought of in that big of a scale yet.”

Then, in a moment of fond reflection, Alexra recalls that moment where Dermer succumb to the Nekrogblikon Stench and the madness truly began for the outfit.

“But, Brandon caught us at a show in the valley of Los Angeles, in front of like, 10 people, and they were all our friends! He actually came with a co-worker of mine at the time, and he was just floored. He was just like: ‘Guys, I have to do something with this. We have to do a video.’ Luckily, he happened to know a goblin, you know John Goblikon (played by Dave Rispoli), and they brought this character to life.”

The result of this interaction was a firestorm of pandemonium via the film clip for the single ‘No One Survives’. A four-and-a-half-minute short story of comical brilliance that has amassed an astonishing 9.7 million views on YouTube alone. Nekrogoblikon were no longer trapped on MySpace, they were the new lords of viral space.

“We pulled so many favours to get that done that we would not have been able to afford that video had we not had everyone behind it, just believing in it. It was just like a passion project, but we had a good feeling about it, and it's great to see that people like Diplo and Dylan Francis and whatnot saw that and were like: ‘That's fucking cool. We need to find out the guy who made this’ - I think it's so awesome.” Alex details joyously and is barely able to catch his breath before elaborating further - “It speaks to how kind of universal the character is. You don't have to be a metal head to enjoy John Goblikon or even Nekrogoblikon, for that matter. It's because it has this whole character behind it. So, it was awesome to watch Brandon just kind of quantum leap!” He exclaims in laughter.

‍Brandon Dermer would go on to do a further six videos with the sextet including: ‘Powercore’, ‘We Need A Gimmick’, ‘Chop Suey!’, ‘Right Now’, ‘This Is It’ and ‘Bones’ – remarkably these are still just sparks of the brilliant blaze that has erupted from these folklore metal musical creatures.
“Brandon and Dave are band members. Well, they're like band mates, but yeah, just not in the traditional sense of playing music, they're like thematic band mates.” Alex clarifies in elation.

The momentum is undeniably at a “full steam ahead” progression though; Dermer, alongside Dave Rispoli and Alex Alereza, co-created the hit podcast Right Now with John Goblikon, with the John Goblikon character as host. The podcast has featured famed guests such as: Andrew Santino, Pete Holmes, Ron Funches, Chloe Radcliffe and Paul Scheer. There are discussions also happening for a sitcom.

However, after seeing the immensely adored actor Blake Anderson from the cherished TV series Workaholics feature in the ‘Right Now’ film clip, this writer deemed it necessary to ask how this cameo helped diversify and grow Nekrogoblikon’s fanfare?

“Every tour, whenever there's times where we meet fans, I hear so much that our show was their first metal show, and so I feel like it's definitely introducing people. And I feel like the fact that we have this humorous element, we have a lot of melodic elements, it's a little bit softer to get into it than, like, Cannibal Corpse.” He says with a chuckle – “So I've been noticing that they don't stop there either which is really cool. We have kind of become this gateway band for, however big you consider our fan-base to be, there's a percentage of those people where we were their entrance to metal. And then they'll come and watch our show, and then they'll see, our opening acts, which are not wacky goblin bands, right? And it's cool being able to introduce them to other metal bands we think are sick also.”

‍Nekrogoblikon will be making their maiden voyage to Australia with Scottish metal pirates Alestorm in a matter of days, and since it has been nearing three years since any new slimy songs have been released – it plagued this scribe to ask if down under will be experiencing any new ‘Goblikon sparks of musical madness?

“I would be jumping the gun if I said, well, we'd have new songs ready to play by the time we get there, just on a level of rehearsing enough to, because we don't want to trainwreck a new song for you guys. But we are in the in the latter half of completing an EP and you will be hearing new songs off it in the first half of 2025 for sure!”

Written by Will Oakeshott @teenwolfwill

Catch Nekrogoblikon in Australia from next week via Soundworks Direct.