Watch Chelsea Wolfe & Friends Remotely Cover Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”
Two Minutes To Late Night is a metal-themed late-night talk-show parody that’s been filming YouTube episodes at Saint Vitus, the beloved metal-centric Brooklyn venue, for a couple of years now. Just like an actual late-night show, Two Minutes To Late Night has had to move to a remotely-recorded live-from-home situation during the current pandemic. Last month, during the early days of quarantine, the people behind Two Minutes To Late Night put together an extremely cool all-star metal cover of the “Weird Al” Yankovic classic “Dare To Be Stupid.” Today, they’ve done something similar with the most beloved chestnut of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo career.
As Brooklyn Vegan points out, Two Minutes To Midnight has put together a radical reimagining of Osbourne’s 1980 perennial “Crazy Train.” The lead singer of this version is Chelsea Wolfe, the stark and atmospheric singer-songwriter whose music draws on folk, goth, and doom metal. She’s joined forces with her regular collaborator Ben Chisholm, former Dillinger Escape Plan bassist Liam Wilson, and Rough Francis drummer Urian Hackney. Two Minutes To Late Night host Gwarsenio Hall — aka stand-up comic Jordan Olds — plays guitar, and so does Cave In/Mutoid Man/Old Man Gloom member Stephen Brodsky, the leader of the show’s house band. All of them do the song remotely, of course, sending in video from their various home studios.
It’s a cool version of “Crazy Train” that pushes it into uncanny-evil territory, drawing on how much the opening guitar riff sounds like John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. And this is also the rare taped-from-home quarantine video that puts some effort into theatricality, riffing on the Halloween opening credits and giving the whole thing a great VHS-tape fuzz-effect. Wolfe sings her part in a dark room full of candles, which is great since we all really hope that she’s goth as hell even when she’s stuck at home. Watch the cover and the original “Crazy Train” video below.
And as a bonus, here’s a Two Minutes To Late Night cover from a few weeks ago. Marissa Nadler, Stephen Brodsky, Gwarsenio Hall, and members of bands like High On Fire and Spirit Adrift covered Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ In The Years“:
You can catch up on Two Minutes To Late Night here.