MUSICAL AMBASSADORS:
Global Metal’s McFadyen and Dunn
by MALCOLM FRASER
As the crushing impact of the Heavy MTL festival touching down this weekend will surely attest, heavy metal is thriving as powerfully as ever. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, though, metal has about the same status as pro wrestling—a white-trash cultural novelty occasionally worthy of condescending curiosity. As it happens, a couple of Canadian-connected documentaries are coming out that demonstrate the power of metal in some unexpected corners of the world: one exploring a socio-demographic phenomenon, another hitting a deeply personal note.
Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen follow up their hit doc Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey with Global Metal, an exploration of metal subcultures in South America, Asia and the Middle East. While Global Metal studies the phenomenon on a macro level, Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti’s Heavy Metal in Baghdad is its micro cousin, focusing on the travails of Acrassicauda, the only metal band to come out of Iraq. Both films will leave metal fans and novices alike with a deeper understanding of what the music signifies at a human level—and if you think that sounds like an exaggeration, it’s all the more reason for you to check the two docs out.
Like its predecessor, Global Metal is grounded in the amiable persona of Sam Dunn, the lifelong metalhead and anthropologist turned onscreen personality. “I do all the work, and he gets all the credit,” laughs co-director McFadyen when asked to describe their collaboration. With Dunn’s Spurlock-esque gee-whiz attitude and disarming faux naïveté, he’s the ideal ambassador to explain metal to the masses.
“Headbanger’s Journey did quite well internationally,” recalls Dunn. “As the word started to spread, we got a lot of feedback from metal fans who felt that they liked the film, but they were like, ‘Well, why don’t you come and film in our country?’ It made us realize pretty quickly that metal had spread to countries that we weren’t even aware of. We thought we knew metal pretty well (laughs), but clearly we didn’t know anything about metal in China or Indonesia, say.”
TRULY UNDERGROUND: AcrassicaudaMetal meaning
The new doc finds the duo circling the globe in search of metal meaning, on the way unveiling such memorable sights as a metal mall in Sao Paulo, a Tokyo bar full of middle-aged Japanese men drunkenly rocking out to Deep Purple, a beachfront hotel in Mumbai where an all-ages gig shares space with a traditional Indian wedding, and a po-faced metal guitar classroom in China.
Aside from these novel curiosities, the film also has a lot of serious geopolitical context. A segment in Indonesia shows a metal singer blithely spouting anti-Semitic claptrap, then a group of younger Muslim fans espousing metal as a force for inter-faith harmony. A section on the Israeli scene politely sidesteps the Palestinian issue, but includes a hopeful moment where an Israeli singer excitedly describes his Islamic fans in Turkey. And in the China and Japan sequences, experts weigh in on the role of metal in heavily conformist societies.
“We were surprised by the degree to which there was a sense of brotherhood or community between metalheads in all these different countries,” says Dunn. “Growing up in the West, the metal scene has got all these kind of micro-politics that kind of split the scene apart, and everyone has their own different allegiances. What was interesting was, when we started to talk and meet with people around the world, is that there’s an allegiance to metal as a whole that kind of supersedes all these scene politics.”
The film successfully argues that metal has been an underground force of globalization, breaking down boundaries and erasing borders with its spirit of community. But what is it about metal in particular, I ask Dunn, that makes it different in that regard from any other musical genre? “First of all, there’s an assumption that it is only kind of a white, Western phenomenon… and only comes from that particular place—angry white kids,” he laughs.
“And secondly, I think there’s the assumption that it’s very rigid musically; that there’s these rules of metal that just can’t be broken. I think what we discovered is that metal, because it explores themes that are larger than life—historical themes, old poems, old battles and these kinds of things—those lyrical themes are something that anybody can relate to.”
“Metal is at a new point in its maturity, in a way. It’s basically a young genre of music, when you think of it; it’s only been around 30 or 40 years. So it’s sort of reached that point where it’s hitting its second or third generation… I think maybe we’re realizing it wasn’t just the music of a particular time, but it’s actually a cultural phenomenon,” he reflects. “So I think we’re realizing that metal is here to stay, and it obviously says something about who we are as people.”
BEYOND BORDERS: MetalheadsIraq ’n’ roll
While Global Metal is full of fun facts and thought-provoking moments, its wide scope inevitably boils down its core arguments to broad generalizations. Heavy Metal in Baghdad essentially advances the same metal-humanism argument advanced by Dunn, but illustrates it with a profoundly meaningful personal story. Acrassicauda’s dedication to their music in the most extreme of circumstances should silence any haters or doubters as to metal’s relevance to those who love it.
Astute Montrealers will recognize co-director Suroosh Alvi as one of the founders of Vice magazine. As the film begins—with Alvi strapping on a bulletproof vest and muttering “People might say it’s really fucking stupid of us to be doing this, but, you know, heavy metal rules”—a viewer might reasonably expect what follows to be a standard Vice exercise in extreme irreverence, political incorrectness and Jackass-like personal endangerment. Instead, it’s a genuinely touching, heartbreaking and inspiring story, and one of the most memorable documentaries in recent years.
THE SPREAD OF SHRED:
More metalheads
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The film began as a series of Webisodes for Vice’s online network, VBS. “We ended up making a feature-length documentary by accident,” chuckles Alvi on the phone from New York. “As an experiment, we cut it into a full-length feature format and submitted it to the Toronto Film Festival, and it got accepted. On that day, it became a film.”
The story begins shortly after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. The members of Acrassicauda—affable bassist Firas Al Lateef, soft-spoken singer Faisal Talal, cocky drummer Marwan Reyad, and quiet guitar wizard Tony Aziz—are looking forward to an era of post-Saddam freedom where they can grow their hair long and rock out without harassment. They play a gig in a hotel guarded by tanks, a gig that has to be over by 7 p.m. so the audience can make it home for the occupier-decreed curfew.
Despite these circumstances, and the electricity going on and off during the show, they satisfy their small but joyfully hyperactive audience of young Iraqi metalheads. While Global Metal’s vision of metal as an under-the-radar scene is belied by concert footage of massive festival crowds, the excitement of the couple dozen young men at the Acrassicauda hotel show truly speaks to the music’s underground spirit and liberating energy.
Recording refugees
As we know all too well by now, the post-invasion outlook on Iraq’s immediate future turned out to have been overly optimistic. By the time the film crew makes a second visit, the band’s practice space has been destroyed by a bomb, the crew has to be accompanied by armed bodyguards and the situation in Iraq is impossibly tense. Eventually, the band members have to leave their country and become refugees in Syria. Incredibly, though, these circumstances don’t stop them from striving to play gigs and record.
The serious themes are a notable departure from the traditional Vice attitude. “If you look at the history of the magazine over the years, there was always an effort to deal with more serious subject matter,” argues Alvi. “People just remember the tidbits, the Dos and Don’ts and the stupid stuff,” he continues with a hint of frustration. “But with VBS, we have a captive, very large audience… we do care about what’s happening in the world, and it’s definitely part of our agenda.”
After a brief theatrical run in New York and L.A., the film is going straight to DVD. “In other countries,” says Alvi, “people are freaking out over it, and want it to have a big, proper, long theatrical run… but in America, they have Iraq fatigue, or so the distributors say. And we’re fighting that with the distributors for the DVD as well. The big box chains don’t wanna touch it.”
This short-sightedness is disappointing, if not all that surprising. “I think it’s been really eye-opening for people to see what Iraqis are like, or can be like,” says Alvi of the reaction to the film so far. “We just get one version of events in the mainstream media. Nobody’s really showing this war from the perspective of the Iraqis living through it.”
A HELPING OF HESHERS: Even more metalheadsHeavy reality
I reach Acrassicauda bassist Al Lateef on the phone in Istanbul, Turkey, where the band members once again relocated when the Syrian government imposed a crackdown on the huge numbers of Iraqis flooding its borders. In fluent, if sometimes idiosyncratic English, he recounts their latest journey, and their new struggle to find a place in the Turkish music scene. “We survive, you know,” he says matter-of-factly. “The passion about the music is all that matters for us. That’s why we sacrificed everything, and that’s why we’re here.”
“What we’re dreaming of is to play heavy metal as a group, you know? As an Iraqi heavy metal group, not as a refugee heavy metal group. Most people call us ‘the heavy metal refugees.’ Sometimes with the whole media attention and stuff like that, we feel kind of like we are in a freak show. Everybody wants to see this retarded case, and write something about it or take pictures of these creatures. But actually, all we care about is the music, and playing heavy metal, and this is why we’re still living, because it’s the only way that we get our feelings out—by music.”
When you think that Western bands routinely break up over petty squabbles and creative differences, Acrassicauda’s commitment to their music against all the odds is truly incredible. As a part-time rocker whose willingness to make sacrifices for metal is decidedly limited, I’m again compelled to ask: what is it about the genre that inspires such dedication? He answers without hesitation: “If you deal with metal as music, it’s kind of the perfect therapy because of what we’ve been through, you know? Seeing dead people, fighting a war, all of that shit. And metal was kind of the only way to get your anger and rage out of your system.”
“That’s one thing, and the other thing is, if you deal with the term ‘heavy metal,’ you know, metal is one of the elements in life, in the universe. It has no life, it has nothing, it’s pure reality. And that’s why we like it. Because all it talks about is reality, no bullshit, which is what we need.”
After checking out these two worthy films, I’m a righteous convert to the power of metal. Hoping that Acrassicauda is still keeping the dream alive, I ask Al Lateef about the band’s future plans. “We have no plans, to be honest with you,” is his stark reply. “Here, as refugees, you are just in a hollow space. You have no future, and even your past you can’t go back to. You don’t know where you’re going. So basically, we have no future plans. What we have is just hopes. We hope we can go somewhere where we can play, and live as regular human beings, and be ourselves and just play our music.”
“I’m praying that things get better and we can go back home. Our biggest dream is to go back home to our families. You know, plus play in a heavy metal band.”
Global Metal opens Friday, June 27;
Heavy Metal in Baghdad hits video
stores Tuesday, July 8
Heavy here at home
The righteous and the wretched at
the two-day Heavy MTL fest
by JOHNSON CUMMINS
Metal is indeed a worldwide phenomenon, but Montrealers won’t have to travel far to get their fill of fist-in-the-air metal mayhem this weekend. The first Heavy MTL festival, happening at Parc Jean-Drapeau, has a solid line-up to say the least, but amid all the fury, there’s of course going to be some fluff. The Mirror has you covered when it comes to advising on the real-deal molten metal—and also the limp-wristed riffs—to help you plan your dashes for a slash at the porta-potties.
Satan-approved:
Overkill: If it’s true that the best metal comes from the worst shitholes, then these New Jersey goombas are definitely worthy of the devil horns.
TAKEN TO TUSK: Mastodon
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Dethlok: These Cartoon Network stars will actually take on human form as they plough through the death-metal hits from their show Metalocalypse, ditties like “Scuba Tank Filled With Farts” and “Inner Child Tied and Beaten in My Trunk.” Questions?
Three Inches of Blood: These Vancouver heshers mastered the twin-vocalist scream/falsetto call to arms long before those screamo kids fucked up the winning formula.
Mastodon: Are you kidding me? Mastodon are the fuggin’ tits and are probably metal’s greatest ambassadors right now. Their technical, progressive beatdown is simply unimpeachable and they would be the best of the fest, if not for…
Iron Maiden: True, their last tour left me in a puddle of tears—they played their most recent record in its entirety, with only a couple of classic pearls thrown in—but at Heavy MTL, these masters of British steel will be stuffing their setlist with all killer and no filler. Metal just doesn’t get better than this.
Voivod: Easily the best and most influential metal band ever to come out of Quebec. Although guitarist and Voivod mastermind Denis “Piggy” D’Amour is sadly no longer with us, the band will be appearing with original bassist Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault for the first time in 17 years.
Priestess: These hometown heroes will unveil the arguably more progressive new direction of their as yet unrecorded sophomore record. Get stoked!
Mötley Crüe: If you find yourself mesmerized by the ghoulish expression on guitarist Mick Mars’s face, remind yourself of this: he is not actually wearing make-up. Heavy!
Run to the hills:
UNWARRANTED: Warrant
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Lauren Harris: I gotta go easy on this siren as she is the apple of her daddy’s eye (her father is Iron Maiden bass lord Steve Harris) but, uh… she’s on early so this would be a good time to find a shaded area and start you marathon rolling session so you have bats for the rest of the day.
Warrant: What can I say? This should prove to be sadder than staring at a baby’s coffin for a half hour.
Heavy MTL at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Saturday
and Sunday, June 21–22, 1 p.m.,
$75 (two-day
pass $135), all ages, rain or shine |
>>
Movie Listings |
