Sam Dunn: When we wrote this film we wrote a treatment which laid out the skeleton and structure of the film and what we hoped to get when we went out and filmed it. One area that we hoped to cover but we never felt like we did it justice with the material we got was looking at the issue of race and ethnicity in metal. We wanted to look at that and also as part of that look at some of the more racist or nationalist strands that have run through metal, especially in recent years. We went out and interviewed different bands and scholars about that and came back to the editing room and felt that section didn't hold water and we didn't want to treat it on a superficial level. So we unfortunately had to put that on the back burner. We do have some interviews on the DVD extras that do talk about that issue.
Speaking of the DVD extras, you put together an extensive family tree of metal that lays out all the different genres and subgenres and connects them. How did you put that together?
Scot McFayden: We always knew that metal fans are the most informed fan group that there is, and we had a list that was hundreds of people long and we knew we couldn't get to everyone. This was originally a way to deal with that, to touch on all the bands that were important and to give a mini-history. That was the concept we came up with. Sam wrote that with another writer, Martin Popoff. Martin knew a lot about the older bands and Sam is into a lot of the extreme stuff so it was a good collaboration. I'm sure there will still be debate for a long time to come about what was missed.
There's also a companion CD soundtrack with the movie. How did that come about?
Scot McFayden: I worked in film and TV for a long time as a music supervisor and I've produced soundtracks. Universal in Canada expressed interest and we ended up going with them and putting together as many of the bands as we could on one soundtrack. It's a great metal 101 for people new to the genre.
Sam Dunn: Much like the film part of the goal with the soundtrack was to touch on a lot of the older bands that people know about like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and those kind of bands, but also to show some of the newer and upcoming bands and also some of the more extreme bands that have been around for the past ten years or so that are really pushing the genre forward. That all falls into our overall ethos which was about demonstrating that metal didn't die in the '80s. It's not just a nostalgic thing. It's alive and well. There are kids today getting into metal for the first time.
Who was the one person on your list that you were the most disappointed about not being able to interview?
Sam Dunn: We definitely wanted to talk to Rob Halford of Judas Priest. He would be at the top of our list, not only because Judas Priest is one of the greatest all time metal bands and that Rob Halford is one of the greatest metal singers. Given that we were focusing on gender and sexuality, we also wanted to talk to him about being a gay man in the metal world. That's something we talked about in the film, and it would have been great to get his perspective on that topic because I know he's super articulate and really cares about metal. It was partly timing. They were doing Angel Of Retribution and planning their own DVD. The management also may have had a bit of misunderstanding of what our intentions were.
Your film has one of the last interviews with Denis "Piggy" D'Amour from Voivod. Did you know he was sick at the time you spoke with him?
Scot McFayden: No, we didn't find out until much later. The band didn't know either. It was about a month or two after the interview that he started to get sick. It was just coincidence that we had the last on-camera interview Piggy ever did. Piggy rarely gets quoted and it just so happened that we selected a clip where Piggy talks about growing up in rural Quebec.
Was the section in the film about the Norwegian black metal scene the most controversial?
Scot McFayden: Yeah, it was controversial. People here are freaked out by it. I think it opened up some wounds from that time. We were front page news in Norway. We only had 9 minutes to represent a very complex scene. We didn't want sensationalism, but it is a pretty sensational event.
Sam Dunn: I think it's quite a fascinating topic in itself, that this very extreme form of metal has come out of a country like Norway which is the number one place in the world as far as quality of life. I think it was an interesting contradiction and a good case study in how to look at how music interrelates with society. People who grow up with a strong sense of morality can feel quite confined by the expectations of living in Norwegian society and in many ways the music is a reaction to that.
