Filmmakers To Create Documentary About Metal's Popularity In Unlikely Places

Scot McFadyen, one of the filmmakers behind "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey", a brand-new documentary offering a guided tour through heavy metal's storied but largely ignored history, has told the U.K.'s The Guardian that he has been hired to cut another documentary, this time about the life of Denis "Piggy" D'Amour, the late guitarist of Canadian thrash metal band VOIVOD. Later this year, he will embark on a third documentary, this time about metal's popularity in unlikely corners of the globe. There is, he claims, a burgeoning black-metal scene in Indonesia: apparently, they can't get enough of bands called ABETTOR OF SATAN and DEFORMED TARTARUS in Bandung. "The thing is," McFadyen sighs, "I'm not really into heavy metal. I was into indie rock from Britain at school. But for someone who's not into heavy metal, I seem to end up making a lot of films about it."

That he has is largely down to his schoolfriend Sam Dunn, a 30-year-old anthropologist, who is the unfailingly eager central character in "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey". The film traces the genre's history through Dunn's lifelong obsession with IRON MAIDEN and VENOM. He conducts an impressive array of interviews — "if the 12-year-old Sam knew he'd interview Bruce Dickinson, he'd be freaking out!" — explains the crucial difference between the first wave of black metal and the new wave of American metal, visits a vast metal festival in Wacken, Germany, ("Fuckin' awesome! Fuckin' awesome! I'm in fuckin' heaven, dude!"),and launches a robust defence of a music he believes has been "stereotyped, dismissed and condemned for 35 years." He only loses his natural ebullience when confronted with the leading lights of the Norwegian death-metal scene, including the fragrant Gaahl, lead singer of GORGOROTH, practising Satanist, and, it quickly becomes apparent, raving anti-semite. "He was actually pretty nice to us, although he's just been in prison for torturing a guy," says McFadyen, carefully. "He told us it was self-defense. We're not quite clear on how that works."

Read the rest of the article at The Guardian.