Metal: A Headbanger's Journey

Canadian anthropologist Sam Dunn has created a very smart and in-depth review of the history, the culture, and the fans of Heavy Metal. He takes the viewer from Birmingham, England, to Wacken, Germany, to the burning churches in Norway, to the living room of supergroupie Pamela Des Barres. While it is an engaging documentary that offers an evolutionary chart of heavy metal and all of its subgenres, its structure does little for personality. Unlike Klosterman's celebratory book 'Fargo Rock City', which forced me to laugh out loud and come away with an even deeper understanding of the hard rock culture and what the music meant to its author (and me, for that matter), 'Metal' left me with a casually disinterested feeling. In 'Metal', Klosterman appears briefly and explains that Heavy Metal was not a way to understand why you didn't belong. Heavy Metal was a way for you to not belong, to feel ok about it, and to understand that there is something larger out there other than you. I agree with this wholeheartedly. For me, I think the documentary spent a little too much time trying to intellectualize a music scene that was more into living than thinking. This documentary does enlist the insight of musicologists, journalists, first-person accounts, sociologists, and interviews with key band members from bands such as Slayer, Dio, and Black Sabbath. I enjoyed Rob Zombie's commentary .-K