Recently, Conan O’Brien was seen onstage with the Austrian band, Cringe Blizzard, screaming his lungs out at the Newport Folk Festival. This is the same American television host and comedian, who will also be hosting The Oscars next year in March. News about this was recently revealed after he posted about this event on his Instagram account. The post was made after his performance with them, as he wrote in the caption about receiving a hernia after singing with them.
Conan O’Brien
Currently, at the age of 61, Conan O’Brien has received and earned many titles throughout his career and life. From a comedian to an actor, and from a writer to a producer, he had many successes throughout the years thanks to his love for passion and comedy. He learned how much he adored these two things when he was young, growing more into it as a Harvard student. Even in Harvard, he would pull pranks but also took his comedy seriously, as shown when he became President of the Harvard Humor Magazine.
After graduating college, he went through the typical journey other aspiring writers and talented people may go through. He took on jobs as a writer for different TV shows, hopping around with little success until finally receiving an Emmy award for his writing on Saturday Night Live (1975). He would then contribute some of his writing and humor to The Simpsons (1989), before then going back to Saturday Night Live after being offered the position of producer.
They needed his help finding a host for a show that would take place during a vacant 12:30 slot for NBC to broadcast. After several candidates, he decided to volunteer himself. This would eventually lead the writer to eventually become the late-night host that many are familiar with today. The show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, would lead him to many more opportunities in life to further expand his production and humor.
Cringe Blizzard
Cringe Bizzard is a band that is described to have songs in the ‘sludge metal’ genre, a musical subgenre that combines doom metal and hardcore punk. Other sources categorize their music as ‘slush metal’, a musical subgenre with little information online about it, save for mistaking it for a brand or other band. Some information is unclear, fortunately, what is very obvious is Conan O’Brien performing with them, as confirmed by his Instagram and other news outlets.
There isn’t any immediate information that can be found on the band, and the most trustworthy source about them so far is the band’s Instagram account. They appear to be a small band created not too long ago and quickly growing in popularity with their unique music. A possible reason why their music is called slush music and not sludge is possibly connected to the caption they wrote in their Instagram biography. The caption, “Fresh ‘n Icy Slush metal from Austria.” is one of the few bits of information new fans can figure out about them.
The Live Performance
The possible reasons that led to Conan O’Brien bursting his lungs to sing in metal with the band is possibly due to him and one of the members being friends. The vocalist member Katherina, who also described the band’s music as ‘slush metal’, appeared on his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend in September. His show didn’t air in Austria, but she discovered him through clips of his show online and became a big fan.
During their interview together, Conan O’Brien may or may not have jokingly suggested he could volunteer as a good vocalist for her band. She responded enthusiastically, and as it turns out, they were both serious about his idea. They posted on Instagram about him being a guest at their upcoming concert even though not many people in Austria knew about him. Reminder, they are a newly formed band with a growing but small fan base. They made excellent use of his image for their advertisement.
The proof of his fun can be seen not just in his posts but also in the many clips of the concert posted on YouTube. There was footage taken of him at Feldkirch, Austria, screaming alongside Cringe Blizzard vocalist Katherina. More professional shots of this moment will be shown in an episode of his new travel series, Conan O’Brien Must Go. Katherina was the one who gave him lessons in metal screaming, and the results of all the screaming surprisingly did end with him getting a hernia.
Final Thoughts
This event was very unexpected but also not that surprising, as Conan O’Brien was always a friendly, humorous, and outgoing person. Thanks to him, Cringe Blizzard now has more publicity, and admittedly, it is difficult to find information on the band alone. They are still new and assumed to have only been created half a year ago or so. They already have many of their songs released online that can be found online after some digging, and they purposefully created many flyers with Conan O’Brien.
