Metal Lords
NETFLIXRejoice. Finally! A film for those that wish to crash the parallel lines of heavy metal and modern audiences. Sure, because such a large crossover between the two is available, large enough for Metal Lords to exist. This Netflix original implies the same people probably want to use Iron Maiden tracks on their latest TikTok or underscore their Spotify playlist with a Judas Priest cover. Either way, the hardcore originals of the metalhead fandom are going to be served a ruinous offering of their favourite tracks, and the target audience that stretches broader and beyond that is going to receive a feature that relies on references they won't recognise.
Flash montage shots to open this feature with sprinklings of Danzig and Pantera, Black Sabbath and Motorhead all make for reliable points of reference as does the calligraphy best associated with the exacerbated skulls and rebellious attitude of heavy metal. Battle of the Bands has formed so many storylines for budding musicians, young bands coming together for the very first time and persevering through the odds to offer themselves as the next musical prodigies. Metal Lords at least gets that right – and with enough entertainment value to it. They are the usual stringing along of cheap material, but why not just shut up and play the hits? No harm to it, as director Peter Sollett finds out almost immediately.
Camaraderie through music and the development of that for an audience in all the right places is just what Metal Lords needs. It represents music more as an outlet for rage than anything else. At the very least, that is explored, but it falls back on the humdrum cliché that forms the core. The sheer volume of instances where the characters must try and refrain from describing something as “metal” is tantalising. It is also horrific. The cop-out is there for the taking and utilised a handful of times throughout. Metal Lords is a completely inoffensive project, which seems a slightly offensive smattering, ironically, considering the up-in-arms approach of heavy metal music and the musicians that crafted it.
Should metal be used as a cute and harmless junction for light entertainment? Absolutely, half of that music needs to lighten up anyway. Metal Lords isn’t the place to do it though. It doesn’t have the charm or energy of School of Rock and instead attempts to replicate the hardened attitudes of the singers it shamelessly rips apart and wears as a front to peddle cheap gags and heartless jokes to streaming platforms. There are only so many shaved heads and face paint appearances before it becomes hard to accept as anything more than a rather comical, almost identical approach to how fringe fad musicianship is presented. Musicians often have other interests, it should seem. Blur’s drummer Dave Rowntree was a Labour solicitor for a long while after his career smacking away on leather pads came to an end. For Metal Lords, it is the musician to man of medicine career trajectory that imbues the moral lesson and clarifies the redundant message underlining this forgettable pastiche of heavy rock and roll.