Metal Evolution

For an old metalhead, this is an interesting show for people who liked the Headbangers Journey video. The disingenuousness shows up when you're reminded that Sam Dunn created his own "family tree" and is basically indulging himself with this show. He's practically begging the grunge bands to declare themselves "metal" and I'm sitting here going, who cares? LOL. I guess as an anthropologist Sam Dunn is naturally predisposed to dissect his obsessions like this, but he needs something else to do. A Rush-style biography of Scorpions or Sabbath would be good.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that this documentary series about heavy metal was by the same person who made the documentary "Metal: a headbanger's journey" (reviewed at this site)...Sam Dunn. Sam grew up being a fan of the genre and also went on to become an academic anthropologist, so he is quite articulate in his analysis of the music he is so passionate about.

In this series he looks at the influences of heavy metal (odd suggestions like jazz and classical music as well as the more predictable genres like blues), as well as the variety of forms the genre has split into...episodes are devoted to such topics.

Not sure if I have all of my notes on this series on hand, but of the notes that I do have, here are some things that I noted or would have liked more information on etc:

* Black Sabbath's famous self-title song started out by their bass player - 'Geezer' Butler - playing classical composer Gustav Holst's doomy piece "Mars". Black Sabbath's guitarist Tony Iommi liked what Butler was playing and played that classically inspired riff on guitar...and that became their famous self-titled song. Holst's 'riff' was played by brass instruments (e.g. Tuba) on his composition.

* There was some old black and white footage of rock'n'roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis playing a song on his piano in front of a studio audience. It looked to me like the teenage males were headbanging to the music! * I would have liked some more depth to the interviews sometimes. E.g. Just from a curiosity standpoint I would have liked to have known why Saxon's Bruce Dickinson decided to join Iron Maiden. Did Bruce feel that Iron Maiden had a better chance at commercial success than Saxon? History has borne that out in any case.

* An episode devoted to more extreme forms of heavy metal would have been appreciated. When I surf radio stations - so to speak - I sometimes come across programmes devoted to heavy metal and often you'll hear heavily distorted vocals and/or very fast rhythms. So, I think that genres like speed metal, death metal and black metal could have been focused on in one episode at least. Or even an episode devoted to more fruity varieties of heavy metal...bands with opera singers or which use symphonic orchestration...stuff like that.

In any case, there are lots of interesting clips and interviews with the musicians etc. Sometimes it feels that Sam pretends to be ignorant on musical matters in order to illuminate for the fan something about the genre...or perhaps it is a process he actually went through and is replaying it for the benefit of the audience...an example would be when he wonders about the influence of jazz on heavy metal.

There are 11 episodes in this series...I think each episode was around the 50 minute length mark. Topics and bands range from the well known to the obscure.

I first heard of "Metal Evolution" when creator, and narrator, Sam Dunn went on VH1's "That Metal Show" to talk about the series. As I am always interested to hear new music, especially older bands that I had overlooked, I tuned in and instantly got more than I bargained for. Dunn crafts the show so that you get a current view of a metal sub-genre along with it's past and it's influences. Often I would leave an episode with a list of 5-6 bands that I had never heard of (or never cared to listen to) and would immediately be happy as I worked through new set lists on Spotify.

Best of all, this show not only appealed to myself (self-professed metal head), but my wife who wants nothing to do with heavy metal music. While my wife won't be picking up any of the new bands from the show, she was interested in the evolution of the music and seeing how current metal music tied back to bands that she was already aware of. While there are some episodes that I particularly didn't care for (grunge / nu-metal) I still found the shows to be extremely interesting.

If you are a fan of metal in any kind - YOU MUST SEE THIS. However, it is interesting for people that don't even like metal music. My sister is not a fan but, she's almost more into this show than I am. I love metal and I love the fact that this show explores all the different genres. I hate the fact that people that don't like metal think it's all just violence and anger. For some bands it is but, however, there are so many different forms of metal that some people would even be surprised to learn that certain bands are even considered metal. The cool thing about this show is that even if there is a band that I absolutely hate on it, it's equally as interesting and entertaining when there's a band I love. This is one the greatest shows on TV right now and I hope that it can open at least one person's eyes to what metal really is.

Metal Evolution is an 11 episode documentary that looks at the influence of Heavy Metal and chronologically how it changed stylistically to form the different genres, glam, power metal, death, trash etc. It starts with how heavy metal came to be in the 70s, what influenced the musicians to create this new form of music. Personally I found it rather generic as it can be argued that most if not all forms of modern music can directly draw its roots from classical, jazz or blues. From there it follows a chronological timeline from the 70s to the present day. Each episode ends with how the genre in that episode led to another genre. So each new episode is a new genre. The narrative includes the narrotors personal view of the music as well as interviews with musicians, magazine editors, music writers and even anthropologist. Some of the linkage IMO is rather far fetched, example is grunge being a genre of metal. Yes it can be argued that some grunge musicians listened metal and definitely grunge happened as a backlash to glam metal. But stylistically grunge is more a descendant of punk. (creed was totally disavowed by all...hahahaha). In summary an entertaining piece of work with a lot of information and personal perspective from the musicians involved.