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 SAM DUNN and SCOTT McFAYDEN talk to TOM HERSEY about travelling the world, listening to metal and turning the whole experience into GLOBAL METAL.
Although you might not recognise the names, chances are if you’re a metal fan you’ll recognise these two dudes’ body of work. The pair was the on and off screen brains behind the 2006 documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, a movie that, along with an insightful look at the evolution of metal since it’s inception in the ‘70s, featured perhaps the most epic interview with Norwegian black metal band Mayhem ever laid to tape.
Although Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey was comprehensive, it focussed on traditional metal scenes in Europe and America. For their second film Sam and Scott wanted to shift the camera to catch a glimpse of the emerging heavy metal cultures in other parts of the world. But how did two Canadians get the idea for this movie? Why would they care about countries with undeveloped metal scenes when their homeland has such an abundant scene featuring bands like Strapping Young Lad, Voivod and Cryptopsy? (At least pre-The Unspoken King Cryptopsy.) While Scott initially jokes that Global Metal was about “making some money and having something to do,” he explains that it was inspired by the worldwide reaction to their debut feature.
“Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey played in film festivals across the world and we were inundated with emails from people around the world asking why we didn’t go to their country and explain the metal scene. Some of the places were very surprising, like China. So we thought it interesting to study the process of globalisation but looking at a sub-culture like heavy metal to see how that had spread around the world.”
To investigate metal outside its traditional homes, Sam and Scott went to the countries that seem like the obvious points of origin for the aggressive individualism so often expressed in metal. Countries where citizens are subject to strict control at the hand of both church and state. Countries where metalheads were willing to talk to the cameras, despite the possible consequences. “You’d think that people in these countries would be scared about the repercussions of talking to a foreign film crew, but the guys in Iran, which is one of the places where they feared backlash the most, were quite ready to talk and were quite proud to tell their stories about what’s happening in their country. About how they can’t get metal and how it’s restricted and how people can get persecuted for wearing metal t-shirts or having long hair.”
It seems that from their travels, Scott and Sam found out that in a genre where being “tr00” is all that matters and to be labelled “trendy” is a term of derision, there’s a new breed of metal fans that embody all that the genre has become synonymous with. “The stakes are a lot higher in some parts of the world. Like I grew up as a metalhead in Canada, where pissing off your Mum and making your teachers unhappy because you were wearing a Slayer shirt was about the extent of it.”
GLOBAL METAL is showing as part of the BIFF program on Saturday August 9, 9pm at The Regent cinema. Tickets ($15) available from www.stgeorgebiff.com.au and the box office.
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