Comedian Luke Severeid Brings Love of Heavy Metal Into Stand-Up

On Tuesday's Loudwire Nights (Jan. 30), comedian Luke Severeid hung out with host Chuck Armstrong to celebrate rock and roll and comedy — two worlds he knows plenty about.

"Honestly, all these metal jokes, I've been working on [them] for years and I've only recently started to put them online, and then all of a sudden a bunch of dorks are just like, 'Oh, that's me,' and I was like, 'Oh, that's been me the whole time,'" Severeid told Chuck.

"I should have been talking about this sooner."

Severeid has been doing stand-up comedy for 12 years and admitted it wasn't something he was that interested in as a young kid.

"Metal was a fixation for awhile there," he said. "I tried to play in some bands [as a] bass player, but I don't have as big of hands as I need. You need to be a gorilla to play."

After realizing he was always the guy at the party trying to make everyone else laugh, he decided to jump into some open mics.

"I was like, 'Well, don't you have to be famous to do that,' and then I realized, 'No man, you just go to a bar and put your name on the list and yell at some people halfway to blackout and you get the dopamine in your brain.'"

When Luke Severeid Started Loving Heavy Metal

Severeid said he never enjoys answering the question of who is his favorite band because it's seemingly impossible — and it can change so often. But he did talk to Chuck about the bands that were his gateway into becoming a legit metalhead.

"Every summer we'd go down to Cannon Beach in Oregon and there's this Christian conference center for youth group and stuff like that," he recalled. "It was in between 7th and 8th grade, some kids that I was hanging out with, they listened to Nine Inch Nails. That was the first time I'd heard music with a bite to it because my parents, they didn't listen to music at all. They're very nice, odd people, but I grew up in a house with no music playing."

From Nine Inch Nails, he got into Slipknot and then bands like Slayer and Pantera.

In fact, Severeid was at Pantera's final U.S. show before they broke up.

"I was still fairly nerdy but kind of getting into metal," he said.

"I remember I was waiting outside to go into the show and I was hanging out with my buddy and I just look over and I see a skinny white guy wearing a T-shirt running and yelling 'SLAYER!!' and then he jumps up and dropkicks another dude on the concrete."

What Else Did Luke Severeid Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

What it was like growing up in a religious household and how that's affected his comedy
How his Mom made him the heaviest quilt he's ever owned
Why he's moving to Pittsburgh and why it's a really good thing for his future as a comedian