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Metal documentaries


Thrashman

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I like nothing more than watching a good heavy metal documentary, regardless of whether I care about the band really, so any recommendations would be most welcome.

A few from me, for what they're worth... 

Headbanger's JourneyMetal Evolution, Global Metal - Sam Dunn's pretty great I reckon.

Get Thrashed: The Story Of Thrash Metal - A thrash nerd's delight.

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil - Funny, and quite moving.

Feel free to mention any you didn't like too!

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Black Metal documentaries:

Mayhem Documentary

Satan Rir Media

Another Mayhem One

Det Svarte Alvor

A lot of the rest of the BM ones are either tackier, less informative, or otherwise not as interesting as these, though I've definitely missed a load out.  If you're like me and find '90s BM culture a bit funny, check out the Belgian one as well, it's on youtube!

Death Metal documentaries:

Death Metal Special '93

Thrash Till Death

Could probably find more but bit pressed for time right now, will post back later with any more I dredge up :)

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  • 1 month later...

Thread necro!!

@agamerwholovesmetal These may not be the exact genres your looking for but a few metal docos I have seen since this thread was closed originally.

Dio Dreamers Never Die

Murder In The Front Row

Mean Man - The Chris Holmes Story

Heavy Metal In Baghdad

Until The Light Takes Us

Slow Southern Steel

There has been more but I need a better list than doing it from memory.

There has also been some funny and cool web shows been put online that I can't remember right now. I know they are not docos for your study but they can be funny. There was one called Roadie (from memory) where some deadbeat wannabe aspires to be a roadie for some famous band. There was a few black metal comedies done purely for web too, although I don't know if black metal fans are allowed to laugh at themselves so they might not go down well.

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Was gonna post this in the WAYLT thread but then I thought I'd see if we had a thread for music documentaries. I do watch a lot of music documentaries, you might say I never met a music documentary I didn't like. I love them, so much that I sometimes really enjoy watching the ones when I don't even like the band. This one's punk not metal but I consider hardcore very closely related to metal, inseparable really, so I'm calling it close enough. Now that I've found this thread I can post all my docos here.

American Hardcore

(2006)

American Hardcore (2006) (sub. esp.)

https://youtu.be/0wYmV4ZcJgQ?si=Aa3Nav7_6xWYE7Sg

 

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I'm not super keen on metal documentaries in general. It always feels like there's some contested element to them, the most recent that I saw was being Until The Light Takes Us. If I recall the movie did earn a few points with me for not glamourizing or lionizing the burning of old churches over some weird proto-paganism. A behavior I find inexcusable no matter how much I like the music due to damage to historic preservation. The whole thing reminds me of a fictionalized dramatization on the fall of the Berlin wall I saw that was produced in Germany probably five to ten years ago. The show itself was very well done, but the writers had a hell of a time tying in the students movement as having any effect on the sort of cloak and dagger plotting the first half focused on. It's sort of the same way with black metal in that there's never going to really be a completely robust treatment of it no matter who you ask.

If I'm going to watch a music movie, documentary or no, I tend to appreciate fictional accounts so I can judge them as I would any other movie. What we know or don't about the early black metal scene is so shrouded I almost prefer to watch movies that try and take a neutral stance and just observe. There was also a documentary on thrash a few years ago on one of the bigger streaming services, but they wasted entirely too much time on Anthrax for my liking.

I also remember reading 'The Sound of the Beast' way back in the day, and something tripped my unreliability alarm when it had an entire section dedicated to Anvil as the heir apparent to the metal crown before thrash came along and outdid them. It was all just a little too neat and tidy as a narrative for me, but it's not like journalists have ever really been above that when dealing in broad generalities that span entire careers.

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Dedicating anything to Anvil is entirely fair because Anvil invented heavy metal, along with everything else that goes along with it! They also invented disagreeing with the statement that Anvil invented everything. When I first read about Anvil I thought they were Canada's version of Spinal Tap, done way too late to be good. They didn't even make a ripple in the water down here in Aus. No one talked about them, no one played them, no one gave a shit. Then this slightly comical, BS doco came out and it was like they were trying to recreate Spinal Tap. That didn't win them too many fans but it did get them talked about. I still haven't heard a full Anvil song, only what was on the doco, but the constant stream of articles that followed the movie were somewhat humorous. I still wouldn't call the Anvil Doco great but it was watchable if only for the comedic value.

 

7 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Now that I've found this thread I can post all my docos here.

Start posting! I remember watching the punk one not long back, but I haven't had time to go looking, and therefore haven't found anything that great recently.

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