Our resident Metal expert takes a quick look at Decline II.
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| My new band is called No Liver Left. |
Make a Jack
and Coke, sit back, and enjoy Penelope Spheeris' completely lopsided The Decline of Western Civilization Part II:
The Metal Years.Let me start
off by saying that if this documentary were a person, it would fall over itself
every time it stood up and tried to move to a destination.
The problem
I have with this documentary is it was filmed in five months in one, yes, ONE
location, Los Angeles, California. Los
Angeles was the hot bed of the ‘Glam’ era of hard rock/heavy metal that was
popular throughout the 80’s. So, as you
would have guessed, the idea of ‘metal’ throughout this film is glorified by
full frontal facial images of scantily dressed men in all shades of mascara,
thinking they are being witty by giggling in between pulls from their
cigarette. While a lot of great music
came from this era, these people, and more importantly, from this location, I
don’t think this is a fair depiction on what ALL of metal is in the broader
spectrum.
Don’t get me
wrong, I really think Penelope tried to maintain some balance in the film by
doing interviews with some of the Godfathers of the genre (Alice Cooper, Lemmy,
& Ozzy Osbourne) to get the whole story.
But, the snippets of these interviews done with these greats are
peppered about the film between the vignettes of bands such as Faster Pussycat,
Poison, and London. I should point out,
that there is a vignette on Megadeth, one of the ‘Big Four’ thrash bands, far
removed from the LA Glam sound and look, but again, it is not enough to
maintain any balance in this film.
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| We are so NOT metal. |
The reason I
go on the attack like this against the film is simply from its title, The Metal Years. If its title was The Glam Metal Years or The
Los Angeles Glam Scene, this would have been much a better representation of
what you are getting yourself into if you are someone interested in viewing
this film. There is no genre of music
with more subgenres than metal and it is very important to, while being open
minded, still maintain a certain distinction if you are going to try to do an
expose on it.
With all
that said, I really did enjoy the hell out of The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years for
the content that it has. There are some
wild escapades that Penelope Spheeris was able to capture in this now time
capsule of naiveté and brute determination to be a rock star.
Share this review, long hair.
Score:
Scott L. Lambert