Saturday, October 27, 2012

"Extreme Metal Retardation" DVD (director: Bill Zebub)


Zebub is a metal journalist and prolific indie filmmaker who keeps his ties to the music world close. I've not been much a fan of his ultra-trashy Z-grade horror films (though some are fun in a silly high school stoner style), but this one held my interest pretty well.

The premise? Zebub, while doing serious interviews with internationally-recognized extreme metal acts, asks them, point blank, stupid questions, and films their responses. So we get a feature film of metal bands responding to Zebub and company's oftentimes offensive questions. Contents include interviews with members of Enslaved, Dimmu Borgir, King Diamond (also featured with a 30-minute serious interview as a bonus feature), Enthroned, Arch Enemy, Voivod, Kreator, and many more. Interspersed with the interview bits are music videos, mostly of the female-fronted gothic metal variety. Merely an afterthought, though, as the interviews are the meat and potatoes here.

Another added bonus here is Zebub's feature film, "Metalheads", which is a re-edit of the 2008 film. It's a pretty well go-nowhere tale of some metalhead stoners who don't have jobs or money, and their relationships with their girlfriends and assorted sketchy characters. Some boobage here, and plenty of obscure metal sounds on the soundtrack, but overall "Metalheads" is fairly unremarkable.

So, final opinion? A fun oddity for serious metal fans. But you won't watch the "Metalheads" feature more than once, so beware. (Bill Zebub Productions)

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