Country:
Canada
Recognizable Faces:
Sam Dunn
Bruce Dickinson
Lars Ulrich
Tom Araya
...and even more Metal Gods
Directed By:
Sam Dunn
Scot McFayden
I have something to confess. I'm a huge metalhead. I think that Metal is one of those few musical genre that despite being extreme, is still dedicated to uplift the human soul. When you listen to a good Metal song, you feel swept away, like you suddenly understand that your life is just a small dot in something infinitely bigger. I'll write a story about Metal one day. Sam Dunn is a fellow Canadian and a full-fledged anthropologist, dedicated to give Metal culture the respect it deserves. His first film Metal: A Headbanger's Journey traced the roots of metal to the alienation of working class as Global Metal explores a whole new problematic. The signification of Metal, at the era of globalization.
For his investigation, Dunn travels to: Brazil, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Israel and Saudi Arabia (from the top of my head) to try and link the Metal community from around the globe. A fascinating common denominator is how many of these country lived under political oppression. Metal, at its roots, started as an answer to the pressures of conformity, which is the only kind of oppression you can get from a right-wing-democratic government. So, by nature, international metal is something that expresses a deeper anger. And it shows. Sepultura, Tengkorak, Salem, all those bands are noticeably darker than what's done in the pre-dominant Metal countries like the U.S or Great Britain. The members of Salem, an Israeli Doom Metal band have by the way, some killer stories to tell, about receiving bombs in the mail from none other than Varg Vikernes,one of the most infamous figures in the culture.
For his investigation, Dunn travels to: Brazil, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Israel and Saudi Arabia (from the top of my head) to try and link the Metal community from around the globe. A fascinating common denominator is how many of these country lived under political oppression. Metal, at its roots, started as an answer to the pressures of conformity, which is the only kind of oppression you can get from a right-wing-democratic government. So, by nature, international metal is something that expresses a deeper anger. And it shows. Sepultura, Tengkorak, Salem, all those bands are noticeably darker than what's done in the pre-dominant Metal countries like the U.S or Great Britain. The members of Salem, an Israeli Doom Metal band have by the way, some killer stories to tell, about receiving bombs in the mail from none other than Varg Vikernes,one of the most infamous figures in the culture.
I took a while before watching Global Metal, even if I dug Dunn's headbanger journey, back in early 2006 when I watched it. There's a reason for that, which I think the film confirms. It's sure fascinating to see the different manifestations of Metal in different countries and how it reached out in the first place, but in the age of the internet, things level out. Kids hear from a band on the internt, they go check it out and they start a band. Global Metal confirms some of those stories, but also surprises the viewers with historical landmarks of the genre we had no clue happened. Like the Metallica riots at the Jakarta show. A lot of kids paid for their tickets that day, but ended up being beaten up by the police. They were literally holding their tickets up while being chased and hit with batons in the streets.
Bottom line, I'll never get enough of someone who can depict the all the beauty in Metal culture. Despite the dark imagery and the Satan-inspired lyrics, it's more than a musical genre, it's a way of life and a culture. That's how it survived the oppression of social conformity for all those years. Global Metal is a good documentary and will make you learn a thing or two about the genre, even if you're a veteran like me. So I suspect that you, writers and bookworms, might find this a LOT more interesting than I did.
SCORE: 78%
Bottom line, I'll never get enough of someone who can depict the all the beauty in Metal culture. Despite the dark imagery and the Satan-inspired lyrics, it's more than a musical genre, it's a way of life and a culture. That's how it survived the oppression of social conformity for all those years. Global Metal is a good documentary and will make you learn a thing or two about the genre, even if you're a veteran like me. So I suspect that you, writers and bookworms, might find this a LOT more interesting than I did.
SCORE: 78%
