CHRIS' QUARANTINE RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY (3/27/20): TWO MINUTES TO LATE NIGHT

CHRIS' QUARANTINE RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY (3/27/20): TWO MINUTES TO LATE NIGHT

By Chris La Vigna (@Chris_LaVigna)


Two Minutes To Late Night: The heavy metal talk show you always knew you needed, but were too afraid to ask for...



Metal is the music of the people. I have made this declaration, and it cannot be challenged in any way. I am right, and you are wrong. Just accept it. Alright, now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to today's Q-Rec Of The Day: the metal-themed talk/sketch show TWO MINUTES TO LATE NIGHT!

Hosted by Jordan Olds, aka Gwarsenio Hall, the internet's number one corpse paint rockin' media personality (again, I have no real authority to back this up with, but screw it, it's my blog man), TWO MINUTES TO LATE NIGHT is basically what happens when your metalhead friends and your film school friends get together and try to make a show that they're pretty confident they could sell to Adult Swim (I wouldn't know anything about that). It features interviews with awesome musicians like Ben Weinman from Dillinger's Escape Plan and Gina Gleason from Baroness,  crazy sketches like "GWAR You Smarter Than A Merch Guy?" and "Open Up This Mic", where stand-up comedians try to tell jokes while being in the middle of an active mosh pit at a Skeletonwitch show, and kick ass live performances from acts like War On Women and Royal Thunder, who usually perform alongside the show's house band, hardcore/metal supergroup Mutoid Man.

The show features numerous wild characters that grow on you as you watch, like Hardcore Melissa (played by comedian Emily Panic), Weird Alvira, everyone's favorite horror hostess/parody song-maker hybrid, and Kevin The Sound Guy (played by show co-creator Drew Kaufman). The humor is both biting and absurd, and the crazy covers that Gwarsenio and Mutoid Man pull off the kind of fun experiments that remind you why you got into heavy metal in the first place: because it's fucking fun, dammit!

The 2MTLN cast/crew: working hard or hardly working? Hahahahahaha I am slowly going insane...

The main segments of the show are shot live at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn, and as someone who's attended one of these tapings, I can personally vouch for how fun they are. Sure, it can be a little odd having to laugh and clap as hard as you can to help make the shots work, but Olds and Mutoid Man are great at bantering with the crowd and keeping the energy up between takes. Also, there's a bar like, right behind you, so just get some more drinks and loosen up, ya turkey! I was there for the tapings of episodes two and three of the first season, and by the end of the night I was sitting up front, drunk as Hell and losing my mind as I helped a giant fake bat crowd surf and listened to Olds & Mutoid Man absolutely slay a cover of "Hot For Teacher."

I'm not the only cool person who's attended tapings, that one blurry person in the background of a shot in episode five is my friend Maya-Hi Maya!

As of now,  the show has completed its eight episode first season, as well as bunch of live specials at music fests like Psycho Vegas and The Fest down in Gainesville, Florida. They also have a great podcast, inventively titled POD-MINUTES TO CAST-NIGHT, where the 2MTLN writer's room does everything from damning universally hated albums with faint praise to offering commentary tracks for past episodes and discussing rock-centric movies like AIRHEADS, ROCKSTAR, and most recently, Danzig's Mario Bava-flavored version of THE ROOM, VEROTIKA.

What really shows through all the sketches and podcasts though, more than anything, is how talented and passionate Olds, Kaufman, Leon, Thunders and Co. are.  Comedy and underground music are their collectively shared passions, and everything they put out establishes them as some of the hardest-working and coolest creatives around. So if you're looking for some crazy metal-flavored webseries madness to perk up your self isolation, head on over to YouTube and look up TWO MINUTES TO LATE NIGHT--MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 

That last part was me trying to imitate Mutoid Man singer Stephen Brodsky's signature laugh, which  he belts out every time he introduces the show. I thought it'd be a nice touch and...y'know what? I don't have to explain myself to you, this is free content you sons of bitches, roll with it or get outta my face! Here's another great 2MTLN sketch, "POSEUR COPS":



And if you really dig it and all the other stuff they produce, maybe consider throwing a few bucks at their Patreon! They're currently doing a series of collaborative recordings from their various dwellings, which they've dubbed "The Bedroom Sessions", to entertain the masses in these trying times.


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