A Headbanger's Journey

There's a lot of documentaries about rock and metal music out there and over the years I'd watched a lot of them. But a week ago I accidentally found one that I had missed. I watched it to find out what it's like and share my opinion with you.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a documentary directed by Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Wise. It follows Sam Dunn's journey across the world to meet and talk to a lot of different people with various opinions on heavy metal music. In the film he explains and discusses characteristics and originators of many metal subgenres, for example glam metal, shock rock, trash metal, death metal, power metal and many others. He created a very good and demonstrative chart to illustrate most popular metal subgenres, their origination and bands that belong to those subgenres. The film consists mostly of interviews with musicians like Tommy Iommi, Alice Cooper, Bruce Dickinson, Vince Neil, Lemmy, Dee Snyder and many others. Together there are interviews with at least 30 artists and 20 non-musicians.

I'll be honest. I love Behind The Music and really enjoy watching it. But sometimes there's an episode about some band that I somehow can't enjoy. I watch it halfway and turn it off. It happens. Sometimes they seem just too uneventful and boring. I really loved Guns N' Roses, Metallica, AC/DC's and Pantera's episode but those are of the top shelf for me. However there's a bottom shelf too. I'm not gonna name a particular episode though.

But A Headbanger's Journey is a totally different story. The one thing that I particularly enjoyed in this film was variety. From Motley Crue to Slayer and from Motorhead to White Zombie. All the different sides of metal you might be interested in are included in the movie. I'll be honest with you. I really don't like all the bands in the movie. In fact some of them makes me turn away and listen to something else. But still I enjoyed watching how they originated and how are they related to each other. If you are a rock and metal music lover you just have to see it. There's just too much interesting interviews and useful information that a metalhead can't afford to not watch it. As a guitarist and music photographer I loved it and I even might watch it again soon. Recommended!