Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Metal Monsters: The Righteous Redeemer’ on Max, Bonus Content For ‘Gemstones’ Fans About Building The Show’s Own Monster Truck

So where did the Gemstones get their own monster truck, anyway? Designed to air adjacent to the Season 3 finale of The Righteous Gemstones, the TV documentary special Metal Monsters: The Righteous Redeemer (Max) reveals the makers behind the monster vehicle that ramped its way into Gemstones viewers’ consciousness with gouts of flame and the sounds of yowling ‘80s-style Christian heavy metal. So let’s meet the crew and torque some rod bolts down at the Metal Shop in Delmar, Delaware, where this righteous thing got made.    

METAL MONSTERS: THE RIGHTEOUS REDEEMER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Hey look, it’s Danny McBride, creator and star of The Righteous Gemstones. “Hello people of television. Now, it’s no mystery that the Gemstones have an array of vehicles” – private jets (“Three of ‘em”), a fleet of white Benz G-Wagens, a sweet swamp boat – “and in this third season, we introduced a brand-new vehicle that the Gemstones own. A monster truck.” 

The Gist: In fact, season three of Gemstones opened with the Redeemer, as a teenage version of McBride’s Jesse Gemstone tore around the track at a muddin’ rally/Christian revival. In Metal Monsters, McBride says everybody on the show’s production staff was worried about where they’d source a monster truck, customized to their needs from the ground up. But he wasn’t. “I knew all we had to do was call our boys Rick and Ryan.” That’s Rick Disharoon, founder and president of the Metal Shop, and his son Ryan, who designs and drives monster trucks. The elder Disharoon is a veteran driver himself – in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, he built and raced the monster truck Backdraft – and these days his outfit is the go-to crafter for the giant-sized vehicles, trusted by legendary drivers like Dennis Anderson of Grave Digger fame. “Look man,” Rick Disharoon says. “We’re the best in the business when it comes to this.”

Rick, his son Ryan, his daughter Jaclyn, and the rest of the dedicated team at The Metal Shop – a group that includes Zach and Brandon, foremen of the fabrication and automotive sides, respectively – have a 30 day window to build the Redeemer. Like any monster truck today, it doesn’t start with anything stock. These enormous things ride on custom chassis, axles, and tires, their engines are built by hand, and their bodies are made entirely of fiberglass. For the Gemstones build specifically, Ryan says, the truck must be reliable – it’s gotta start right up and be ready for multiple takes in a typical shoot day – and be ready for use in close proximity to people and film crews, which isn’t at all normal. “The Gemstones also asked if we could blow it through an RV – I mean, who are we to say no?” Throughout Metal Monsters, the crew refers to their clients not as McBride and his partners, but as if the fictional televangelist family themselves were signing their checks. No Baby Billy sightings on the shop floor, unfortunately.

400 feet of specialized metal tubing, thousands of welds, a 1500-horsepower engine with custom-fitted pistons, and a set of gigantic 66” tires – the Redeemer is steadily taking shape at the Metal Shop. And that’s good news, because when the show decides to shoot the truck for the first episode, their deadline to finish it moves up by a week. The team also stages test versions of some of the stunts the truck will need to perform in the series, to be sure of function and safety. Like having the Redeemer be able to crawl up the trunk of Judy Gemstone’s car, or casing out the stipulation that it must be able to crash through an RV. That final test proves especially satisfying in all of its vehicle-obliterating glory. Redeemer! Redeeeeemer!

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Did you know that Big Boi of Outkast fame is these days partners in an Atlanta-based company that designs and builds custom live/work trailers for the entertainment and sports worlds? (See the Hulu show Big RV Remix.) Max also features four seasons of American Chopper, featuring the argumentative antics of Paul Teutuls Sr. and Jr., and Prime Video has five seasons of Monster Garage, with its outlandish custom builds from Jesse James and his team.    

Our Take: Obviously, the hook for Metal Monsters is the Righteous Gemstones connection, complete with appearances by Danny McBride to bookend it and McBride, David Gordon Green, and Jody Hill serving as co-executive producers. But what this documentary special really feels like is a backdoor pilot for a reality show featuring Rick Disharoon and his family business building out wild monster trucks and other custom creations. (The fact that Max is today home to an entire slate of reality programming imported from the Discovery universe is not insignificant.) We meet Disharoon, who’s talkative, gruff, and personable in the manner of a reality show ringleader; there are extended vignettes focusing on the characters in and group dynamic of the auto and fabrication shops; and we find out midway through Metal Monsters that the Metal Shop has all kinds of other projects at hand. The Gemstones connection and Redeemer are put on the back burner for 20 minutes while Metal Monsters delves into a different project at the shop, that of a client’s wish for a party boat with collapsible components to make it mobile. It’s an interesting sideline, and really satisfying when the team’s careful measuring and welds lead the boat’s components to line up right and telescope into each other with perfection. But it could also be the B-plot of another episode of Metal Shop Monsters, or whatever such a show featuring Disharoon and his team might be called. 

Sex and Skin: Nothing here. 

Parting Shot: “They pulled it off,” Danny McBride says over more footage of the custom monster truck hitting sick ramps. “They pulled off the impossible. I wanted to make sure that the Redeemer felt like a character, like it was part of the show, that it had a personality. And I think every single person on that set wanted to take The Redeemer home.”

Sleeper Star: In Metal Monsters, there’s an internal war raging between the guys in the auto and fabrication shops. Who can come up with the best name for the tiki-style custom party boat being built for a client? “Wasted Away” is pretty solid, but ultimately “Deez Knots” goes up on the leaderboard. 

Most Pilot-y Line: “For this build, I want to lower the engine,” Ryan Disharoon explains, pointing to a rendering of his design. “I wanna build this thing so, if they want us to go into a crazy corner, it’s not gonna roll over. ‘Cause for the stunts, they want to do a lot of drifting and just blowing through stuff. You don’t wanna be flipping it over, tearing up that body.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Metal Monsters: The Righteous Redeemer certainly works as a breezy addendum to Gemstones season three – the outrageous vehicle really did feel like a character in the show. But Metal Monsters is also designed and fabricated from the ground up as general fodder for the custom build wing of reality programming. Any gearheads and grease monkeys watching will feel right at home in the Metal Shop.  

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges