Metal Lords review: A Game of Thrones showrunner gets personal about music

Just a few short months after the controversial finale, August 2019 was announced. Game of Thrones D.B. and Weiss hosted the show on HBO. Weiss, David Benioff and Netflix signed a 200 million dollar deal. At the close of Thrones’ run, but the stream of new material has come at a trickle so far. The two served as executive producers on 2021’s Sandra Oh-led miniseries The ChairBut the new film for teenagers is Metal Lords The first taste of postcardsThrones They have allowed me to write from them ever since. Although the duo produced the film together, the screenplay was written by Weiss alone. It is loosely based on Weiss’s own high school band days. It’s a slight film, and an almost self-consciously low-key follow-up to the massive Game of ThronesHowever, Weiss is able to use his personal experience and make even the most modest ambitions a reality.

Metal Lords The story centers around a childhood friend and their growing gulf in middle school. Hunter (Adrian Greensmith) constantly bristles against the contours of a world he’s grown to abhor — a dully affluent, overwhelmingly white suburb. The physical manifestation of Hunter’s sharp-edged temperament is his lean, ungainly frame. KevinITAnd Knives out’s Jaeden Martell, styled to uncannily resemble a young Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree) is a gentler presence. He’s mild-mannered and nervous, and frequently gets swallowed up in the wake of Hunter’s bigger personality. But he’s also curious about girls, parties, and everything else his more popular classmates get to enjoy.

Hunter is both a true metalhead and serious guitarist. Kevin doesn’t know much about the music, but he agrees to play drums in Skullfucker, the high-school band Hunter believes will conquer the world. The bond they form between them is strengthened by metal, but their tension along the way drives this film and provides some insightful observations about what it means for someone to dedicate themselves to a niche artistic medium.

Photo: Scott Patrick Green/Netflix

Many movies have examined the apparent intrinsic connection between heavy metal and social alienation. A foundational film for the pseudo-subgenre was Jim VanBebber’s 1994 short My Sweet SatanWhich? Dramatizes Ricky Kasso’s true crime story. Jonas Åkerlund also looked to real life for inspiration for 2018’s Lords of Chaos, documenting the rise of the early ’90s Norwegian black metal scene and the black cloud of church-burning, suicide, and murder that followed its young antiheroes.

Film from 2013 that is moody and atmospheric Metalhead provided something like a photo negative of those films, depicting a grief-stricken young Icelandic woman whose only solace comes from black metal’s lightless void. Lukas Moodysson’s anarchic 2013 feature We Are the Best — a clear influence on Metal Lords — is steeped in punk, not metal, but it also bestows loud music on its disaffected teen protagonists as an amulet against the conformity of their Swedish hometown. In all these films, heavy guitar riffs and pummeling drums become a lifeline for kids who can’t cope with the world. Something almost supernatural seems to draw them into this cacophonous, confounding music that square society can’t stomach. That describes Metal Lords’ Hunter — but it pointedly doesn’t hold true for Kevin, or for Skullfucker’s eventual third member, the classical-loving cellist Emily (Isis Hainsworth). Metal Lords does its most interesting work in the gaps between its leads’ relationships to the genre.

Beginning of Metal LordsHunter already converted to metal. Hunter’s black outfit, posters and kneejerk rejection for all other metal music are proof of this. He’s an archetypal movie metalhead, a kid from a broken home with behavioral issues and an inability to relate to his peers. His energy is channeled into a deep knowledge and practice of the guitar. Hunter is a Hunter for every headbanger.

Photo: Scott Patrick Green/Netflix

Kevin represents an undocumented segment of the metal fandom: The enthralled, engaged, newcomer. Do not believe bullet-belted messenger-board shills. Nobody was born knowing what the Morbid Angel is. Every metalhead spent a few dizzying months or years discovering what they loved about this music, and Kevin’s journey in Metal Lords Perhaps this is the most vivid onscreen representation of the process. The smile that creeps across his lips when he first listens to Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” – the kickoff song on a playlist Hunter assigns him as homework — captures a magical, indescribable feeling of discovery. The day a metalhead first hears “War Pigs” (or “Master of Puppets,” or “The Number of the Beast”) often ends up feeling like the first day of the rest of their life. Martell’s performance animates that revelatory moment beautifully.

Less convincing is the film’s depiction of Emily, a kind of Metal Pixie Dream Girl who serves as a love interest for Kevin, as well as what Hunter cringingly calls a “Yoko” for Skullfucker. She’s introduced in a scene where she screams at the school’s marching-band director (author Chuck Klosterman) and spikes her clarinet into the turf. When Emily later reveals that she only acted out because she hasn’t been taking her “happy pills,” it’s clear that she’s little more than a girl-shaped pile of clichés. The script doesn’t let the audience in on the precise state of Emily’s mental health, but the way it cavalierly throws in an aside about her medication reveals how little it actually cares. The presence of or lack thereof mood-stabilizing medications can excuse or explain everything she does. Her appearance is not that of a person.

That’s no discredit to Hainsworth, who gives a quietly powerful performance despite the script’s shortcomings. Emily joins Skullfucker to be a cellist. She also helps to rename Skullflower in order for it play at the high school Battle of the Bands. Her interest in music is passive, and evidently tied to her love for Kevin. Netflix is a cute Netflix series about their relationship. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before kind of way, but the undercooked characterization of Emily gives short shrift to female metalheads, most of whom didn’t need to fall for a boy to understand the power of Judas Priest.

Photo: Scott Patrick Green/Netflix

Metal Lords’ climax comes at that high-school concert, where Skullflower girds themselves against their classmates’ boos and perform “Machinery of Torment,” written by executive producer and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. In School of RockAnother spiritual precursor to Metal Lords, Jack Black’s Dewey Finn says, “One great rock show can change the world.” Weiss clearly internalized this principle. It didn’t matter what the 90-minutes were like. Metal LordsIt had to end in an unforgettable musical moment. Skullflower delivers on that promise: The young stars’ performance is legitimately awesome, all gawky energy and ear-to-ear grins. Although Hunter, Kevin and Emily are three different types of metal lovers (and musicians), the combined power of their performances is far greater than what they can produce when they work together.

There’s a bit of “Who is this for?” In Metal Lords. Game of Thrones Obsessives will need to look closely at the projects to spot similarities. Cranky metalheads, on the other hand, will find plenty to complain about in Weiss’s sometimes smug portrayal of their favorite genre. (Counterpoints: Game of Thrones Metal is as bad as it gets, so metal elitists need to get over themselves.

It’s also a teen movie, but the specifics of its subject matter aren’t exactly tuned to a Gen Z frequency. In 2022, classic heavy metal isn’t a 16-year-old’s parents’ music — it’s their grandparents’ music. This is the central theme of Metal Lords is that, for those lucky few who respond to metal’s siren song, the experience of falling in love with the genre is an ageless, universal rite. There’s no social currency to be found in metal, particularly in a high school where the only other band plays tepid Ed Sheeran covers to raucous applause. Hunter, Kevin, Emily and Emily all embrace metal and are dedicated to it as both musicians and fans. It makes a strong case to any teenager out there who’s interested in pursuing something that nobody they know cares about: Do it anyway.

Metal Lords Netflix is streaming it now