The San Fernando Valley is one of those odd, sun-stroked places that can eat a man whole if he explores it in the wrong way. To uninformed observers, the further north you go, the more it seems like an expansive cavalcade of strip malls and occasionally industrial side-street seediness, but those observers aren’t seeing what’s behind the non-descript walls.

On a warm, clear day in North Hollywood, less than a mile from Circus Liquor – a dilapidated booze warehouse that a gargantuan clown presides over – two of the best known real-world clowns, who also happen to be the frontmen for the greatest band in the world (by their own approximation), are in a rehearsal studio behind one of those industrial facades, getting ready to re-take over the world and plotting a summer tour that’ll take them to some of the largest amphitheaters and festivals in the world, from the not-far-from-here Hollywood Bowl to headlining monstrous international festivals, including Download in Europe and Sasquatch in Washington state.

The two men in question are Kyle Gass and Jack Black, the frontpeeps of Tenacious D, who last were lavished with duo attention when their movie, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, came out six years ago – and promptly flopped. The failure of Destiny, with the gigantically-produced tour to support its soundtrack album and the promotional muscle flexed to make it a success – seems, to a casual observer – to have sidelined the D a bit in the interim, with just a few shows at charity events and one-off festival appearances (including stepping in to headline Outside Lands in 2009, filling in for the Beastie Boys and a then-ailing Adam Yauch) biding their time.

Their new record, Rize of the Fenix, addresses this break directly: The anthemic title track opens with the lyrics, “when the Pick of Destiny was released it was a bomb/ All the critics said the D was done/ The sun had set and the chapter had closed/ But one thing no one had thought about/ Was that the D would rise again.”

Also of course, it’s all an in-joke – or is it? During the course of an hour-long conversation with Gass and Black, it’s unclear when they’re serious and when they’re joking – about the band’s history, about where they are musically and even about their own songs. Sitting with the two of them is like nerding out over music with your funniest friends: They end up riffing on The Boss ( “I never really thought of Springsteen as political as Tom Morello, but I guess he kind of is,” says Black), Il Divo ( “Opera is awful,” offers Gass), a hypothetical guitar battle versus Jack White ( “I would send Kyle in – I’m not the axe lord,” admits Black), and their new foes Arcade Fire, who are surprisingly dissed on the record. ( “Whoever is on top of Shitcake Mountain is the one we are going to zero in on,” says Black. “At the time we were recording that, it sounded like that is who we had to go after.” )

The notoriously hilarious Black constantly closes his eyes at various points during the interview, either focusing intently or getting just a bit of relaxation during his moments of downtime; Gass tries to answer questions directly and kindly. But the two of them are unsurprisingly at their best when they’re riffing off of each other, whether they’re talking about upping the ante on tour, what the best way to get a very famous friend of theirs to cross-dress is, and, especially, about whether they’re serious – or even have the ability to be – in the first place.

Talk a little bit about what actually was going on during your break.

Kyle Gass: What actually has been going on?

Jack *Black What actually has been going on.

Gass: Well, let’s see. You probably made a bunch of movies, didn’t you?

I’m talking more about the mythology behind this record, which seems to be about the story of what happened after The Pick Of Destiny .

Gass: Right. Well, the mythology is that we went down into a deep crevice and were left for dead.

Black But what actually happened, Kyle?

Gass: The real story? Well, that basically is what happened. We did The Pick of Destiny, and then we did the tour, which actually got a surprising turnout, despite…

Black Despite the movie’s failure, the tour was pretty magnificent. It was a fully realized, Broadway-ready production. We had multiple sets. We had a full character arc. We had a full story with a beginning, middle and end. We had a movie in the middle that showed us in hell, forming a band.

Gass: Because that is definitely part of our story: We’re two guys with acoustic guitars.

Black Yeah, so we couldn’t just show up with the band. We had to, like, tell the story of how we met and how we formed. We came back onstage after that movie and we’re in hell. The stage had been transformed from Kyle’s living room into hell. We were in hell with our new band, and we were rocking hell very hard, and then Satan came – and the living embodiment of The Metal came.

Did you go way over the top? Is that why the break had to happen?

Black I don’t know. I never felt like we were taking a break. I felt like that’s our natural incubation period: six years. Before we had our first album, we were just jamming and playing for about six years.

Gass: Yeah. That’s true.

Black Then, after that album, it took us five or six years before we put out our movie-album, and then it was another five or six years before this one. We go away and we come back.

Gass: We clean out the pipes and come back.

Black We’ve been talking about and working on Rize of the Fenix ever since The Pick of Destiny. We’d do little tours here and there. And whenever anyone asked, “When’s the next album?” we would jokingly say, “Summer of 2012” because it was so far away. But then, it slowly came to be.

Gass: We did it!

Is it going to take that long for the album?

Black I could definitely see having an album sooner than five years from now. 2017 seems too far away. We’ve got to speed it up. It’s like that thing – the phenomenon of the quickening. As the Earth gets closer to disintegration, things start moving faster.

I haven’t heard of that concept!

Black The quickening? I heard some late night AM talk radio guy talking about it. It’s a conspiracy theory.

Kyle, had you been working on D stuff in the interim?

Gass: Well, Jack has this amazing film career, and I get a bit part here and there. I’ve always thought, it’d be great to get another band going – so, I spend a lot of time on my side projects and touring and playing music [with Trainwreck and the Kyle Gass band]. But the D crushes anything that I could come up with, and if Jack’s not involved…

Black Me too, dude! The D crushes all of my things, too. We always come back to the D, because there’s a magical combination there. Like, if you were the chef that invented apple pie, you can keep on making other things, but you are always going to want to go back to that pie. That’s what people want. We are more than the sum of our parts, Cage. Because when you put the flavors of the Cage and JB together – separately, they taste good, but when you put them together…it’s like PB and J. Peanut butter is good. And jelly is good. But when you put them together it is an explosion.

Gass: [Says matter of factly] It is the most powerful taste combination imaginable.

When you guys started, it seemed like the nature of the D – the joke, if you will – was that two guys with acoustic guitars were the greatest rock band in the world, even though it was just the two of you. But then, you actually became huge and did big tours and festivals.

Black Yeah. And it ruined the concept.

So how does that fit into the current concept of the D?

Gass: How does that fit in? Because the fantasy became the reality?

Yeah.

Gass: [Again, he says very matter-of-factly] It is pretty awesome.

Black Yes, but he is right. Part of the joke is dead. Part of the joke is gone.

Gass: But I think we can always rest assured that we don’t really look like rock stars. Nowadays, we are getting a little long in the tooth.

Black It gets funnier – what are those old farts doing up there thinking they are rock stars?

Gass: I think the concept is safe.

Is your tour this summer going to be as over the top as the previous one?

Black The answer to the question is: No.

Gass: No, we’re keeping it realz.

Black There’s something I have noticed when I go see shows – it bothers me when there is a lot of production. I don’t want to see a band with a lot of Las Vegas style lights and pyrotechnics. All I really want is to hear the songs. I’d almost just prefer them to be lit by bare bulbs and then, if they can blow my mind that way – that is the real thing. When I see all of those production things, I feel like there’s some cheating going on.

Is there a specific band that comes to mind that bothers you like that?

Black I would never say which band was annoying me. I can’t call people out like that.

Gass: Well – Genesis. They have too many lights.

Black “What the fuck are we doing here? Are we here because we wanted to see some lights?”

Gass: I like The Song Remains the Same. It’s the Zeppelin. It’s all you need. I think people just want to be able to see our faces.

Black That was shot before they had jumbotrons, too. So if you had shitty seats – you just had shitty seats.

Gass: There were a lot more binoculars.

Does that mean there won’t be any gimmicks this year?

Black Well, we have got a couple of things going for this. We are going to have a big inflatable Phoenix on the stage. And the plan is, at the end of the show, there will be a huge confetti release.

A huge confetti release?

Black Cumfetti. It is confetti, but shaped like semen.

That is fairly awesome. [Laughing.] Has anyone ever tried to talk you out of all the cock imagery?

Black My mom. She is like, "Why do you have to be so dirty?’ I’m like, “Mom, it’s part of the act!” I don’t think of it as being childish. Spinal Tap are so funny, and they did it. And I think of them as being elder statesmen of the comedy rock world. So, in a weird way, I think of it as being really advanced and mature.

Gass: It’s aggressively stupid.

Black Who else would try to stop us besides our moms?

Gass: Well, I think the record company. They didn’t want the album cover [which features a gigantic penis rising from the ashes].

Black Oh, right.

When you were making this record, did you feel like there was pressure to look at the jokes in new ways?

Black No, never thought about the joke.

Gass: Sometimes I forget that we’re a comedy band. We try to write good songs. Serious songs don’t really roll out of us. They are not that interesting.

Black [Out of nowhere] I’m still thinking about how the last tour was so…

Gass: Grand and glorious.

Black It was so prop-, set- and production-heavy and this one is stripped-down. I wonder if it is going to be better, or not as good? If we were going to go that big again, we would have had to create a big story line. Which, I guess, we could have done. We still could do it where we start off the show and the set is a back alley and we are homeless because The Pick of Destiny was such a failure. [He says as he becomes increasingly excited.] It starts off in a back alley and there is a cardboard box, and we are inside of it, and there is a little fire. We are hobos with bundles on our sticks. [He stops.] We weren’t going to do that this time. This time it’s like: Hey, we are going to rock you as hard as we can and our songs are funny but we’re not going to bring in a bunch of fucking bells and whistles. We are not Carrot Top. We are not all props. We are the fucking D! We will blow your minds with our rock. And if we can’t, then we end the tour with a double suicide.

Gass: Ouch.