Global Metal

A documentary by Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen. In English, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Japanese with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, June 20, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

In this more colourful follow-up to their Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, codirectors Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen take an even wider journey, with the rangy Dunn again our amiable on-screen guide.

Where the first film, released three years ago, looked at the phenomenon of metal as a less industrialized subgenre of the ongoing rock ’n’ roll saga, Global Metal focuses on their subject’s outsider status to examine the role of headbanging in cultures with especially rigid notions of social behaviour.

The filmmakers make interesting points in Tokyo, where teens revel in metal’s outlandish theatricality without much regard for content or implication—or even genre, as glam groups like X Japan have more in common with ’80s hair bands than with anything satanic. The role of kabuki in traditional entertainment certainly makes metal’s excesses less threatening to the average Japanese, as observed by Marty Friedman, a Yank guitar-slinger who moved there.

India, a place where few metal bands have ventured, is apparently also home to kids who associate the devil’s horns and almost tuneless guttural screaming with fun and general free expression. And in the Muslim world, as glimpsed in modern Dubai and crowded Indonesia, black T-shirts and long hair take on more political significance.

Musically speaking, Israel’s Orphaned Land and Brazil’s Sepultura offer interesting variations, as they incorporate local instruments like ouds and Amazonian drums into otherwise monotonous textures. (Compared with them, mainstream vets like Iron Maiden sound like Andrew Lloyd Webber on steroids.) On that score, the most intriguing stop is in China, where bands such as Tang Dynasty (sometimes including amusingly articulate Chinese-American Kaiser Kuo) are developing fusions that fascinate, regardless of tribal tastes.

In the end, much of what Dunn and company assume about metal could be applied to rock music in general. But as metal is just about the only sound left that many parents still hate, you could say it carries a particularly incendiary torch. Or, more simply, you could just say, “Yaaaayaaaaaahhh!”

Comments

1 Comments

Divyang

Jun 9, 2012 at 8:15am

What a shit review about a pretty average documentary. "Tuneless" / "Monotonous"?? Have you even listened to the music? Pooh. Another mainstream asshole shitting on a genre.