I’ve grown rather weary of metal documentaries in recent years, having seen one too many times on TV the same old story of how Black Sabbath created metal and Iron Maiden perfected it, blah, blah, blah. There comes a day when any self-respecting metal fan will realise they’ve heard/seen it all before. The prospect of learning something about another culture, about a metal scene that exists in a far-flung land on which I have very little knowledge is certainly appealing however, and with that I was looking forward to watching this documentation on Sri-Lankan metal.
As a brief introduction, Sri-Lanka is a small island off the coast of Southern India with a population of around 20million (1/3rd of that of the UK). So understandably there aren’t hundreds of metal bands to choose from. As mentioned in this film, there are certain pressures from society for metal fans to cut their hair and smarten up and get a job and all the usual bollocks which to a certain extent is no different over here, and due to these pressures line ups are ever-changing with band members leaving to become respectable members of society. So, we do get a glimpse at the difficulties faced in the scene over in Sri-Lanka. The other main one that seems to come across by the bands interviewed is the lack of finances – I guess the main thing is that there aren’t any real record labels in the country to offer bands the funds to record an album and go out on tour so it’s purely down to D.I.Y. efforts with bands funding everything themselves and you do have to admire the passion and dedication of the four bands featured in this video (Funeral In Heaven, Merlock, Cannabis and Fallen Grace).
This D.I.Y. ethic very much comes across on this DVD as well – it comes in a cardboard cover with black stencilled letters. There’s no flashy camerawork and the sound quality is pretty awful especially on the live performance clips which are virtually unlistenable. So with that in mind, I’m not going to hold too much criticism on the production values of this disc, however as far as the content goes I personally think there was potential for this to be made a lot more interesting and engaging than it actually was. The documentary is structured with four straight interviews with the above mentioned bands, with a few live performance clips thrown in there for good measure. The interviews tend not to dig very deep at all, and while in some instances the bands expand to give reasonably good answers at other times there is a lot of repetition I personally felt could be edited out. The main problem is that the whole thing really seems to lack creativity and, while I believe the passion is definitely there and this was made with good intentions, there is no real angle as such and I don’t get what this is trying to tell me other than what looks to be a student filmmaker interviewing his mates’ bands. A shame, as there was potential for this to be more. I was really hoping to get more of an insight into the scene in this country, but it actually shows me very little and there are a lot of questions I had as a viewer that really haven’t been addressed very well, if at all.
All in all, I felt this could have been done better. I admire the enthusiasm of Dinesh Guneratne and Naveen Marasinghe for making a documentary that’s clearly un-commercially driven and these guys are obviously passionate about the scene, but I found this to be a rather un-engaging way of passing an hour.
http://www.arisethemetaldoc.com
