If you think all heavy-metal fans are young, pimply, white pot smokers with limited education and no wardrobe sense, think again.

Taking a thoughtful yet passionate approach toward the world’s loudest music is the specialty of Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, the codirectors of Global Metal, which opens in Vancouver on Friday (June 20). They spent a year travelling 45,000 kilometres and assembling 350 hours of footage to deliver this 93-minute documentary about metalheads in South America, Asia, and the Middle East.

Their previous collaboration, 2005’s Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, chronicled the growth of this resilient musical subculture, including interviews with everyone from Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi to Norwegian black-metal bands.

A film-festival hit for Seville Pictures, it got picked up in more than 30 countries. That helped the filmmakers pursue their fascination with headbangers worldwide—a natural fit for Dunn, who majored in anthropology and hosted a metal radio show at the University of Victoria.

“The globalization of metal is a reality, and that’s why we made Global Metal,” explains the 34-year-old in the Georgia Straight’s offices. “When people think of globalization, they usually think in serious economic terms, like the World Bank, or about the spread of mass culture, like Britney Spears or KFC. Obviously, metal has spread through word of mouth and the Internet, not by being force-fed through mass media. We discovered in Global Metal that it’s a largely positive force in people’s lives.”

Reaching back to 1985, the film shows how the first Rock in Rio festival coincided with the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship and the advent of democracy, and how singing along with Whitesnake and the Scorpions celebrated political freedom. “At that moment, the bands were starting to release their first albums of Brazilian heavy metal,” singer-guitarist Carlos Lopes of Dorsal Atlantica recalls on-camera.

The interesting occasional confluence of metal’s flamboyant showmanship and local cultural traditions is also explored in visits to China and Japan. Kaiser Kuo is interviewed as the Chinese-American founder of Tang Dynasty (China’s first metal band, in the late ’80s, incorporating traditional chanting), and he notes the similarities between the long hairstyles of contemporary musicians and ancient Chinese warriors. In Japan, the resemblance between KISS’s makeup and kabuki actors is highlighted.

An interview with an Indonesian death-metal group called Tengkorak turns edgy when they discuss a song entitled “Destroy Zionism”. “We’d read some lyrics and saw all this anti-Zionist stuff,” McFadyen recalls. “People told us they’d gone right-wing. Their frontman is a lawyer, and he’s not a dumb guy. But the vibe was tense.” That scene is counterbalanced by Dunn’s visit to a mosque with a peaceful-minded Muslim fan.

Next up for the filmmakers? In-depth documentaries on Iron Maiden and Rush. “I never thought I could love metal more, but I do,” Dunn says. “Metal’s spreading to places we never imagined. The future is very bright. No, wait! It would be very dark, right? But it’s a good darkness.”