Metal – A Headbanger's Journey starts off with some clips from the infamous underground classic, Heavy Metal Parking Lot to give us an idea of just how popular metal was in the eighties and how rabid some of the fans can get. It's a nice way to set the tone before hitting us outside the head with footage from the equally infamous PMRC hearings from around the same time, in which numerous heavy metal musicians were made out to be as bad as Satan himself.

After that introduction, we learn a little bit about Sam Dunn, the writer/director behind this examination of heavy metal music and it's seemingly undying popularity. Sam has a degree in anthropology, grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and has been a life long fan of heavy metal since he was a kid. He explains to us his motivations behind the project, and from there we learn of the origins of the genre, from the early days where Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Cream and Blue Cheer kicked things off and back even further than that, exploring the very obvious connection between heavy metal, classical music, and to a lesser extent, blues.

With the origin of heavy metal explained, Dunn moves on and covers a few different and more controversial areas that the genre is known for. He delves into how and why Satanism is so often associated with the genre and he also covers the misogyny and sexism that seems to run rampant throughout metal's history. Throughout all of this, Dunn backs up, or at least tries to back up, most of his points with sound bits, archival footage and interview clips from throughout the history of heavy metal, many of which he recorded and conducted himself specifically for this production.

These interviews, and not Dunn's presentation, are what makes Heavy Metal – A Headbanger's Journey worth watching. Dunn takes a page out of Michael Moore's handbook and puts himself on screen a lot. While this might seem like a good way to give the viewer a glimpse of where the filmmaker himself is coming from, we don't need that many clips of Dunn banging his head and shooting the horns at a rock show and we don't need as many personal anecdotes as we get here as they're not nearly as interesting as the people that he's interviewing are. Dunn's appearances and thoughts don't appear to be in the film out for reasons of ego or hubris but to bridge pieces and sections together and while sometimes this works, other times it comes off as a little too 'fan boy' and slightly tighter focus would have done wonders for the finished product.

However, as stated, the interviews in this movie are great, even when they could have been better. Dunn managed to hold court with one of the men who started it all, Tony Iommi, and talk to him about how and why he used the tritone in their music and why they embraced the sinister imagery that Black Sabbath is known for, and he also managed to get Ronnie James Dio to take him into his own home and talk to him about where a lot of the inspiration for his own dark lyrics and imagery comes from. Lemmy from Motorhead, who Dunn lumps in with other 'New Wave Of British Heavy Metal' bands like Iron Maiden, shows up from time to time and as always he's an amusing character to listen to, while Maiden's front man, Bruce Dickinson himself, also gives Dunn a few minutes of his time to discuss with him the finer points of how to get a crowd riled up for a rock show and how he tries to make even the audience members sitting way back in the nose bleed seats feel like they're part of the show too.

Dunn doesn't stop with the veterans of the genre, however. He's savvy enough and he knows enough about metal that he digs a bit deeper than just those bands that everyone has heard of. He starts with death metal acts like Cannibal Corpse or those dark gods of thrash metal themselves, Slayer – both of whom talk about the blatant Satanism that use in their work quite openly, explaining their theories on what's wrong with the world and where the darkness in their music stems from. Dunn doesn't stop there, however, and he actually manages to truck off to Norway for a while where he scores interviews with members of Mayhem and Gorgoroth – while the guys from Mayhem appear pretty much blitzed out of their mind, Gorgoroth manage to explain where their hatred for Christianity stems from and why. For anyone who hasn't already read the excellent Lords Of Chaos this could potentially be pretty revelatory material, particularly when we learn of the church burnings that were sweeping the country a few years ago. Interestingly enough, as seriously as these guys take themselves, Alice Cooper says that any time he's met any of them they've been nothing more than puppy dogs, shy and giddy to be meeting one of their main influences and he equates their actions with simply trying to out do one another in terms of who is more evil than who (one gets the impression that Alice doesn't know the whole story behind this scene, what with the murder and the burnings and what not but he's always cool to hear from so we'll let it slide). While there are a lot of important acts omitted (no one from Judas Priest is interviewed, neither is Ozzy) you can't expect everything to be covered in one single film when the genre is as big as heavy metal is. Also included in here are interviews with Rob Zombie, members of Motley Crue, Geddy Lee from Rush, Arch Enemy, Rage Against The Machine, Dee Snider, and more.

When it's all said and done, Metal – A Headbanger's Journey comes across as more of a very passionate love letter to the genre than a hard hitting expose of what makes the music tick. There's not a lot here that hasn't been covered in other documentaries throughout the years and those who have been involved or read enough on this history of heavy metal music won't learn a lot. That being said, it's a fun ride and fans will definitely enjoy the interviews and the clips that Dunn provides, as they make it all worthwhile.

The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen picture is good throughout. Though the project was shot on digital video and not on film the disc is well authored and as such there aren't a lot of compression artifacts to worry about, while edge enhancement and aliasing is kept to a minimum. The documentary does splice in a lot of archival footage and some of this material is a little worse for wear, having been shot under less than ideal conditions or just not being in the best of shape, but even during the more tattered segments everything is perfectly watchable while the new footage shot specifically for this documentary looks very good indeed.