Metal Asylum

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Metal Asylum was a TV series on Fuse in the mid 2000s. It was hosted by Juliya Chernetsky and served as a much more subtle and brief incarnation of the popular Uranium series. Metal Asylum traditionally ran a half hour focusing primarily on playing music videos, largely of the heavy metal genre. The show's production ended in 2006 due to Juliya's departure from Fuse TV.

In contrast to Uranium, interviews were rare. A typical episode of Metal Asylum would have Juliya standing solo in a shady lit studio, briefly discussing bands before playing their videos. Its opening title sequence featured Juliya pushing through twisted black graphics.

As opposed to Uranium where Juliya could fly off the cuff most of the time, on Metal Asylum she read off a script on a teleprompter. The scripts were written by legendary metal TV producer Jason Haitkin (who also had a hand in Uranium and Headbanger's Ball and also directed videos for bands). The script and teleprompter was one of the reasons that Juliya didn't curse on Metal Asylum as often as she did on Uranium.

There was a Christmas episode filmed but never aired. This is known as the "Lost episode" of Metal Asylum. The show featured mostly satanic videos such as Deicide's video for "Scars of the Crucifix". The episode was filmed, but never aired due to a miscommunication about being pre-empted for Christmas. To this day, the show has never been seen by anyone outside of the production team.

Metal Asylum had not only several exclusive videos, but also premiered and helped break out some underground bands like Municipal Waste and The Red Chord. Phil Demmel from Machine Head even confessed that he first found out about Municipal Waste from watching Metal Asylum.

The show was guest hosted on two occasions when Juliya was on vacation. Mark Hunter from Chimaira and Howard Jones from Killswitch Engage each hosted 2 shows. Howard Jones also interviewed Throwdown on one of the episodes that he hosted who ironically he also is a part of their management team.

The 100th Episode featured interviews with Strapping Young Lad, Suffocation and the first North American television interview of Decapitated. It also featured a live performance of the band doing "Spheres of Madness" at BB Kings in New York City. It is one of the only available American television interviews with Vitek from Decapitated before he died in a van accident in 2007.


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