Cinema

I finally snagged a copy of "Global Metal" this week, and would strongly recommend it. This is a sort of follow-up documentary by Sam Dunn, who did "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey". For those who missed that (excellent) documentary, he's a life-long metalhead with a degree in antrhopology who is interested not only in the music but in the culture and so on. In this case, he decided to look at the metal scene outside north america and europe. The whole thing is fascinating. It starts (predictably but awesomely) enough in Rio, hanging with Max Cavalera and talking about Sepultura and the birth of the Brazilian metal scene. The archival footage from the Rock in Rio festivals is interesting: the first one in the 80s when the Scoprions and Iron Maiden (et al) played and really introduced the music to the country, and the 2nd one 5-6 years later when Sepultura blows the doors off the joint. We then take a stop in Japan (where there's a sort of tension between Visual Kei bands - who sort of descend from hair metal and power ballads -- and the "real" metal). The Japan segment is pretty good, but I think suffers by not covering the heavy experimental music scene that's really the signature music on that scene (no Boredoms etc). The group of middle-aged businessmen by day and Deep Purple fanboys at night who hang out at a pub called "Blackmore's" are worth the trip alone, though. Also, it's interesting to note the change in audience attitude. Traditionally, Japan was known for sitting quietly during concerts, so we start with Tom Araya talking about the first ever Slayer concert in japan, and how they had heard all about that but, I mean, who the hell sits quietly through a Slayer concert. So they go out and start playing and the kids rush the stage and start head-banging and moshing and generally behaving like metal fans, and the ushers hurriedly shoo them all back to their seats (not American style bouncers mind you, polite ushers just sort of shaming them into their seats) and they sit quietly for the rest of the gig. But we also see footage of a recent Lamb of God concert where they look just like any other metal audience, so things have changed (and they are doing the circulation mosh thing for LoG even).

After that it's off to India where, as Dunn points out, there had never been a concert by a major western metal band. Despite that, there's a pretty good metal scene developing, and a lot of this segment is about the conflict between traditional culture and metal. Amazingly, the next stop is China. Finding the metal scene in China sounds tricky, but this might have been one of the best segments in the movie. It turns out that an American emigre helped formed a band called Tang Dynasty some years back that essentially fueled a lot of the homegrown metal scene in China, combined with the fact that the Chinese got left-over cut-outs of assorted mostly shitty metal CDs in the 80s. Tang Dynasty is genuinely good, albeit in a somewhat old-fashioned Iron Maiden sort of way. To show us that the metal scene is evolving, Dunn also shows us a more recent band called Painkiller, who are playing some seriously fierce black metal. It's the second-heaviest band in the movie, and I would love a chance to see them live (second heaviest because the movie includes footage of Slayer playing "War Ensemble" and "Angel of Death" -- nothing's fucking heavier than that).

Next up is Indonesia, which actually has had a fairly thriving metal scene for years. The historical footage here is pretty astonishing. We see footage of Sepultura playing before a huge crowd (really really huge) back in the days of the dictatorship, and Sepultura's basic political message (forged as it was in a third-world dictatorship) really resonates as much as the music. You're pretty much watching little lightbulbs appear over the thousands of banging heads, and its powerful stuff. The next footage is from a Metallica concert a year or so later, where many more people showed up for the concert than could get in. Inside, its a big stadium full of young people rocking out. Outside, fires are starting, police are cracking skulls, riots are ensuing. The footage is from inside the stadium, but you can see the flames licking up outside the stadium and hear the sirens over the music. It's intsense, and resulted in a ban on that sort of concert for a while. The cultural stuff about the current scene in Indonesia is particularly interesting also. There's a mix of different religious traditions (mostly Islamic) and a discussion of how they fit in with metal, and features both very positive and spiritual musicians and one band that's basically spewing anti-Israeli hate.

Which of course segue's to the middle east. Orphaned Land and the Israeli scene are up first, then (because the filmmakers couldn't get into Iran) a trip to a big rock festival in Dubai to meet with fans from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the arabic world. They show some footage of an earlier interview with Tom Araya where he talked about being sent a photograph of a friend who hand visited Iran and found "SLAYER" (in the usual jagged logo format) spraypainted on a wall in Iran. Then during a (very interesting) interview with an Iranian metal fan, Sam says "we were talking to Tom earlier and he talked about..." and there's a beautiful moment of realization where the fan realizes 1) the guy he's talking to hangs with Slayer, 2) Slayer knows about the fans in Iran and appreciates them, and 3) Sam realizes that this is one of the guys risking serious legal trouble by spraypainting SLAYER on the walls.

The movie finishes on a high note, with a trip back to India. And why go back to India? Because the very first major heavy metal concert in the country's history is happening in Bangalore -- Iron Maiden is playing. Sam joins in the crowd to watch one of his favorite bands. As he says, he's pretty much instantly transported to that time when he was 13 years old and seeing his own first big metal show, as everybody in the big stadium audience is pretty much in that exact spot (not 13, but that same feeling). When the opening music starts up and the band is settling on stage, the crowd starts singing along and swaying, and we get a wonderful shot of Bruce realizing that he's about to perform before one of the most enthusiastic and appreciative and loving audiences he's ever seen.

So, what you get is a mix of anthropological interest (who knew anything about the metal scene in communist china?) and repeated examples of the power of music to unite the audience and by extension bring people together around the world. Fewer performances and interviews with big deal well-known bands than the first movie, but ultimately more moving. And well, as noted, there are still performances and interviews from Slayer, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Lamb of God etc. Also, Sam Dunn has a pretty impressive collection of black T-shirts -- from strolling the beach in Rio in an Enslaved shirt to visiting a mosque in indonesia in a Mastodon shirt.