Metal Reviews

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My favourite parts of the movie were India and all the Middle East countries. Great stuff.

I don't think he's saying there's a lack of diversity--but that metal embraces that diversity and unites us through some kind of common ground. The whole "you either feel it or you don't" is the most important part of that point. All metalheads, regardless of their views, "feel" it--for whatever reasons they may have.

Maybe "homogenous people" is not the eact term. But Sam Dunn insists on something else Metalheads have in common than "either you feel it or you don't", namely that they're a "culture of outsiders" and that's what the review fundamentally disagree with and tries to criticize. And he does that rather repeatedly throughout both documentaries, either implicitly or explicitly.

Yes indeed. I also found the part about China very interesting.

To say that "there are metalheads whose personal values don't match with those expressed in the mainstream media...etc." is a bit of an understatement, and also say that individual freedom is a separate issue from the music, in this case, ignores the genre's origins and raison d'etre as a whole. While "outsiders" is a term one can argue over until the cows come home, talking about metal as simply a genre of music without an overall tendency toward certain modes of thought, is like claiming that politics and punk are two separate issues because one is merely "music". Music has been a vehicle for ideas, lifestyles and overall ideology throughout the 20th century and continue to be as such into the 21st century. To me it would be much more fitting to say that, "yes, there are metalheads whose personal values match with those expressed in the mainstream media...etc." While it may not be one's stance in relation to society that exclusively makes one a metalhead, since evidently music is the primary part of that equation, it is one of the factors that has shaped the genre and its devotees since the beginning, not to mention that it is one of things that makes the music what it is.

Anyways, at times I'm not even sure if Dunn understands fully some of his own statements. I'm not really a fan of either of his documentaries, though for other reasons.

I'd like to first say that I haven't seen this yet, as a disclaimer... so I'm kind of guessing at what Dunn is saying based on the review.

Maybe you can't all say metalheads are "outsiders" in the fairly narrow sense of political viewpoints or moral attitudes- at least, I agree with the review that you can hardly apply all that universally.

But, culturally, I would have thought you could say metalheads are "outsiders". Most metal fans seem to reject the "shiny happy" aspects of mainstream culture/music and are looking for something a bit wilder, and more challenging. You could just put that down to the aesthetics and sound of the music, as the review argues, but you could also see it as a rejection of "shallow" pop music. As evidence, look at how angry many metalheads get when some vacuous celebrity wears an Iron Maiden t-shirt without having a clue who Maiden are, for example. Or, how offended we often are by "commercialised" versions of metal (e.g. nu-metal). Why would these things bother us if there wasn't some underlying cultural identity being offended?

Haven't seen this one but I didn't find his first to be awful to someone new to metal. What did you find wrong with it?

What I found wrong with the first one? For someone creating a documentary for people new to metal, his entire understanding of the genre appears to be one of someone who is new to metal, himself.

I'm not sure if you're expecting me to pull the typical "he put Cradle of Filth as Norwegian Black Metal" spiel, but I'll assume everyone's heard that one by now and move on. Beyond the CoF error which could have been put down to bad editing, Dunn has a very limited understanding of what constitutes metal's core sub-genres (by this I mean black metal, thrash metal, death metal, doom metal, traditional heavy metal). For example, he has apparently no understanding of what doom metal is considering he seems to believe that bands like Opeth and Theatre of Tragedy are more representative of the genre than bands like Candlemass or Witchfinder General or...you know...Sabbath He also apparently doesn't understand what defines thrash metal either, not to mention his unawareness of the existence of crossover. I'm sorry, but people can say "blah blah genres" all they want, but to me these are fairly obvious and idiotic misunderstandings for someone who has been into the music for more than a year or two. It's not like I'm criticising him for things most metalheads wouldn't know. If you love the genre as much as you say you do, then know the history...especially if you're going to make a documentary about it. Ok, fine make a rudimentary documentary, but it does nothing but mislead people new to the genre when they decide to trust the information.

That said, even his whole question of "why heavy metal has been consistently stereotyped, dismissed, and condemned" is rather needless and idiotic for anyone that knows, even remotely, the history of the genre, which he could have represented more accurately. It's like asking why punk "has been consistently stereotyped, dismissed, and condemned." We are talking about musical sub-cultures that, to one degree or another, arose as reactive sub-cultures. Even if bands like Venom weren't serious about their satanic image, it was still pushing boundaries and reacting to a certain social climate. But Dunn doesn't even go as far as to touch on that, but rather sticks to the simplistic "outsider" take. Pretty much every section of this film is simplistic (which is fine since documentaries often just skim the surface) and flawed in some way...and if you're creating a piece of work in order to inform outsiders on something they don't know about, at least know about the subject yourself.

I disagree. While not doing this exercise explicitly regarding Venom, he does it extensively in other parts of his documentary, like for example when discussing Twister Sister and the PMRC episode. Even his rather simplistic take on Norwegian Black Metal ends with a very intelligent remark relating the Satanic imagery displayed by those bands to cultural sensibilites present in the Norwegian society. And he comes back to this again in his conclusion : "And what's become clear to me is that Metal confronts what we'd rather ignore. It celebrates what we often deny. It indulges in what we fear most".

As far as the history of Metal music displayed in the documentary is concerned, I think Sam Dunn does a fairly good job. Of course, anyone taking on the difficult task of drawing a map of Metal sub-genres inevitably exposes himself to criticism from connaisseurs and I don't think there are 2 Metalheads agreeing 100% on such a classification. But even here he's not that wrong after all. Opeth and Theatre of Tragedy are classified into Goth Metal, not Doom; Doom is absent from his Metal sub-genres map and Doom bands go into Stoner Metal. But I don't consider Metal bands classification disputes as fruitful endeavors.