Heavy Metal: Louder Than Life

Recently Metal fans are getting a hell of a lot of documentaries about their favorite music genre. After the entertaining (but ultimately not very enlightening) "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" and VH1's "Heavy" series comes "Heavy Metal: Louder Than Life". Maybe it's because we have seen all this presented in a similar way not too long ago, maybe it's because the documentary just doesn't cover any new ground, but "Heavy Metal" is the worst of these three Metal-movies.

What's most irritating is that the documentary jumps through the decades without any kind of chronological order. There is no logical order of the topics discussed, either and the music videos shown don't really fit the narration most of the time.

"Heavy Metal: LTL" has some interview partners that the other two documentaries missed, but then there are some important figures missing here, too, which means that none of the three movies are "complete". "Metal: AHJ" suffered from the absence of any Metallica or Judas Priest members. "Heavy Metal: LTL" does include interview snippets with James Hetfield, Rob Halford, K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton but there are no Iron Maiden members at all.

Unlike the other two documentaries "Heavy Metal: LTL" isn't a good survey of all the different Metal genres. It virtually ignores Death Metal, for instance. Instead it ponders for the millionth time which band really was the first metal band.

For fans there's nothing to learn here, but "Heavy Metal: Louder Than Life" is still kinda entertaining to watch, if neither "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" or VH1's "Heavy" are available.