The metal train keeps rolling...

I am in a metal mood. After watching the Metalocolypse series, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey arrived in my mailbox. What a documentary. I don’t know how this escaped me for three years. Sam Dunn outdid himself in offering up a very comprehensive history of metal. Starting from the grandfathers of metal of the late 60’s, he works his way up to the present covering everything from 80’s glam to Swedish black metal church burnings. If your first interview is Geddy Lee, you are on the right track.

In A Headbanger’s Journey, Dunn takes the time to explain heavy metal in musical terms showing its many similarities to classical music such as Wagner’s use of bass in the orchestra to metal’s pounding double kick drums and how the sustain of a distorted electric guitar shares many qualities of a violin section (I’m glad to hear somebody else echo this. I have always though the warm growl of Marshall stacks sounded like violins).

Dunn loves Iron Maiden and makes no bones about it. In fact he later went on to make Iron Maiden Flight 666, a travel documentary on Maiden’s “Somewhere Back in Time” tour. (Flight 666 is an amazing look at possibly the greatest, most hardworking and amazingly independent band ever.) So of course when Dunn wants to get the low down on comparisons to the classics, he goes to the man with the greatest operatic voice in metal, Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson gives the best interview of the film describing his job of filling the entire venue with his voice in an effort to shrink the audience so that it is like Maiden is playing to each and every person. You can tell from the short interview that Dickinson loves his fans and works his butt off to please them. There is no pretentious rockstar persona attached at all and a completely down to Earth working class guy, another topic covered in the film.

The personal and community aspect that Bruce talked about was explored with a trip to Wacken Open Air, a giant, 70,000 person, outdoor metal festival in Germany every year. I now have a new vacation goal. The place looks absolutely amazing. Metalheads in tents drinking beer and eating German food, who could ask for more in life? It was refreshing to see metalheads in their natural element of drinking and headbanging without any trace of violence or hysteria like some U.S. rock n roll festivals have become famous for. Aside from all the black leather and spikes, Wacken looked like a hippie jazz-fusion festival, full of long hair, sleeping bags, making friends and little showering.

A Headbanger’s Journey also looks at the life-long love of metal. Metalheads seemingly never grow out of it, nor should they. The first band I really got into was in fact Iron Maiden. Everything about them was cool, especially to a kid in eighth grade. The album art, WWII lyrics, and ridiculous guitars riffs all blew me away. I still rock out to Maiden. As I grew into a rebellious teenager, I discovered the sister subculture to metal – punk. Just like I still love metal, punk has never left me either. I still want to fight the man and listen to Minor Threat and The Clash. I never intend on stopping. The music and the culture are part of me and I am part of it. As Mos Def said about hip-hop, “People talk about Hip-Hop like it's some giant living in the hillside coming down to visit the townspeople. We are Hip-Hop. Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop.” Well, we are metal.

Anybody who has a metalhead friend who they just don’t understand should rent this movie. It will give you a whole new insight into a misjudged and stereotyped subculture. I’ll leave with a quote by Dunn himself, “Ever since I was 12 years old I had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don't. If metal doesn't give that overwhelming surge of power that make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you might never get it, and you know what? That's okay, because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me we're doing just fine without you.”