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When Todd Evans decided to hang up his breastplate and step away from the role of Beefcake the Mighty as a member of the horror-metal outfit GWAR in order to lead his own band, he knew what he was getting into.

From a tour bus down to a van ... from crowds of at least a thousand down to a hundred ... from a shock-rock spectacle of props and special effects to a lean, mean, metal machine ... it was a bit like pitching in the majors and being sent down to the farm team.

Evans, however, couldn't be happier. GWAR was an important part of his past, and he remains grateful for is tenure, but his new project -- Mobile Deathcamp -- is where his heart's at these days.

"We're not necessarily making a king's wage or even close, and to go from popping out of a bus with a semi-truck and an entourage and playing to a guaranteed thousand people a night no matter where you go, it's basically like starting over," Evans told The Daily Times this week. "Now, we're down to a van and minimal gear, and with only three of us, we can unload and load into a club in less than 10 minutes. Our mentality is that of a punk band -- we play our set and when we're done, we've got our stuff torn down in 5 minutes.

"On top of that, we're all good friends, and we get along real well. There's always some ridiculous thing going on between us, some ridiculous jargon. And really, it's just so much easier this way."

Easier, and a lot more fun. When Evans was recruited by GWAR frontman Dave Brockie to play bass in 2002, he already had a lengthy metal resume of various projects, some of which had played with GWAR and Brockie's side project, the Dave Brockie Experience, before. Getting a call from the band was thrilling, he said, but after the 2006 release of "Beyond Hell," Evans felt his stint in the band had run its course.

"I've been a guitar player now for 25 years, playing speed metal, thrash metal and speed punk the whole time," he said. "That's just kind of how I came up, and I was getting that together again behind the scenes during my last year-and-a-half tenure with GWAR. After 'Beyond Hell,' I was like, 'I'm gonna leave and chase this other dragon, because I ain't getting any younger, man.'"

His GWAR bandmates were empathetic, as were many of that band's fans -- they wrote e-mails expressing their appreciation for Evans' portrayal of the Beefcake character and pledged to keep up with his new project. GWAR tapped Mobile Deathcamp as one of its opening bands earlier this year, and the inclusion helped expose the band to a legion of untapped fans.

"We ended up selling all of our CDs and shirts -- people want to be a part of it," he said. "They're talking about throwing us on the second leg of the tour, and the fans seem to dig it."

Tuesday night, Mobile Deathcamp will drop by the fabled Longbranch Saloon on the Cumberland Avenue "Strip" in Knoxville, and for Evans, it's a sort of homecoming -- his grandfather and several of his relatives were from the Tazewell/Lone Mountain area, and he's familiar with the caliber of musicians in East Tennessee.

And while banjo players and guit-fiddlers may not be heavily represented at Tuesday's show, one thing about it is for certain -- when he comes off the stage, he won't be covered in all of the fake blood and other faux bodily fluids that are part and parcel of a GWAR show.

But he'll still be just as sweaty.

"We're not shoe-gazing, man, but at the same time, I'm not wearing a 130-pound costume, either," he said. "But it's still some good cardio. It's just music that's tickled me from the beginning, when I first started playing guitar. When I first heard 'Hell Awaits' by Slayer, the sky opened up, and that was the music I started pursuing.

"That type of speed metal -- the most aggressive and vicious and honest -- there's just a certain honesty to it that I dig. And the guys I'm playing with are amazing, man. They don't have to even think about it."