Force Fed Films: Global Metal (2008)

This week Puneet decided to make me watch the sequel documentary to Metal: A Headbanger's Journey entitled Global Metal. I watched the first film also as a Force Fed Film back in January, and I figure Puneet is tired of waiting for me to watch the next one on my own. While the first documentary did briefly go into the metal music scene in other countries, it was only to a few that spawned their own sub-genre such as Norwegian Black Metal. This time he goes to Brazil, China, Japan, India, Israel and a bunch of other countries to see what metal is like there, and how did it come to them. I'll be comparing this film a bit with Sam Dunn's first documentary, so just be aware of that as you hit the jump link for the rest of my thoughts.


In Sam Dunn's first documentary, he covered a multitude of subjects and topics of a wide spectrum. All a part of a much larger question of "What is Metal?" It was all very interesting and surprising at how many different ways he was able to come at the subject from. This time in Global Metal, he comes at the film from a different perspective. Instead of a lot of different topics and questions about metal, he instead just asks the same few questions but in a wide variety of cities around the world. To be totally honest, this didn't work so well for me when compared to Headbanger.

I'm not saying it was a bad documentary at all, it definitely accomplished what it was setting out to do which was look at the metal scenes around the globe. I guess my problem is that this movie really seems like it's made for people who are already hardcore massive metal fans. It shows the subtle differences from what you might consider "normal metal" as it's affected by the different cultures. But it kind of all looked the same and sounded the same to me. Well, except for Japan. That was crazy.

Basically he just went to all these different places that I suppose he finds it strange that they listen to metal music and finds some local people and asks them what Metal is to them, and how did they first hear about it. It just seemed like the same 2 questions over and over and over again. Of course there's variation on the situations, like how everything is controlled in China, or how metal isn't about feeling like an outsider in Japan, or how it reflected the political feelings in Brazil. I found that since I don't eat/breath/sleep/live Metal, I just wasn't that interested in hearing "what does metal mean to you" type stories from a bunch of people around the world. When it came right down to it, it was almost always the same kind of sentiment anyways.

I can see this being a far more interesting movie to metal fans or people really into globalization or the differences in world cultures. In the end it just wasn't for me. I was really surprised by this because I really liked Headbanger, but I think that movie was made with people like me as the intended audience. It was more educational, whereas this was more of a deeper discussion on Metal as a lifestyle and common ground no matter where you are. If you love Metal, then you probably should check this out though. This is still a good documentary, the subject and execution of it just didn't resonate with me.