'Metal: A Headbanger's Journey' Filmmakers Discuss 'Global Metal'; Audio Available

Directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn of Banger Films Inc. creators of the critically acclaimed, award-winning documentary "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" and its soon-to-be-released follow-up "Global Metal" were interviewed for this week's "The Metal File" podcast from Montreal's CHOM-FM. Download the segment as an MP3 file at this location.

"Global Metal" is said to be a feature documentary that takes audiences to unexpected corners of the world from Indonesia, Japan and China to India, Israel, Dubai and Brazil to check out the international flavors of what turns out to be a most universal music heavy metal.

"I guess 'Headbanger's Journey' for us was like a 101 like a defense for metal," Dunn tells ChartAttack.com. "Obviously, we didn't want to do something similar, like an obvious sequel that just had interviews with all the guys we didn't get to in the first film.

"We actually wanted to do something that was different, which related to the first film but could stand on its own. So looking at metal within the theme of globalization and how it has spread around the world and what it means to kids growing up in different cultures seemed like a different enough approach to take to the second film.

"We wanted to go to countries that had an interesting story about how metal had arrived and what kind of impact it made. Obviously, there were lots of countries we couldn't go to, but the ones that we chose we felt gave a broad overview of Muslim countries, Christian countries, Buddhist countries and kids growing up in different economic environments. That was important, to touch on that diversity."

From the genre-blending sound of visual kei artists X JAPAN to the mix of metal and traditional Jewish folk of Israel's ORPHANED LAND, "Global Metal" shows that despite our many differences, we are in many ways very much the same.

"It's a tribe," Dunn tells ChartAttack.com. "No offense to jazz fans, but I got a feeling that jazz fans don't have this international feeling of brotherhood and camaraderie.

"It's like, you're wearing a SLAYER shirt, I'm wearing a SLAYER shirt. You're from Indonesia, I'm from Brazil... but it doesn't matter. We weren't sure if that kind of feeling of brotherhood in metal would extend beyond the places we knew like Wacken [Open Air festival in Germany], but we found that it does. The loyalty to metal sometimes supersedes our alignment with a particular culture or religious belief or political view.

"After coming back from travelling to all these countries, we kind of realized there is a lot more that we have in common than we think. I think right now the media paints this picture of everyone being in conflict with one another. But at the end of the day, we realized people just want to listen to music and enjoy what they want to do, and that's pretty common."

Read the rest of the ChartAttack.com interview at this location.

Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn were interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos on "The Hour" on May 21, 2008. The 11-minute segment, which originally aired on CBC in Canada, can be viewed below.

For more information, visit www.globalmetalfilm.com.

Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn on "The Hour":

"Global Metal" trailer: