Various Artists

I’ve never been one to pick up a soundtrack personally, other than maybe Freddy versus Jason or when I was about 6 Mortal Kombat Annihilation. But Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey is what a good soundtrack should have, a mix of everything to represent the movie, or in this case, documentary. The soundtrack goes back and forth in progressions representing the different and main areas of metal from the then to the now. Ranges from metal’s earliest bands from the 60’s to glam rock, power, death and black metal. For a better understanding on how such a broad range of bands including Cannibal Corpse, Rush, Slipknot, and Motorhead could all be contained on one soundtrack, just knowing about the documentary itself explains a lot.

Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey is a documentary that explores metal to give a layout of what happened, how each of the categories of metal came into place all just branching out of one another, to who the first metal band really was. One of the unique aspects of the CD itself is the booklet. It folds out into a small poster showing the branching out of metal with examples of each category, and in enough detail restricted to a confined space that you can understand what each genre’s main aspects are. Although one thing I would have changed was placed some of the bands in different categories that I think they fit into better. The other side of the small poster has a basic guide to the movie with places filmed and what was done where.

The track list goes in a good mix from each song to another differentiating from metal genres to keep it far away from being a stale and repetitive soundtrack with bands of the same sound. That brings out a good effect for the documentary’s overlying theme and moral that metal is not all the same and just piled together. It has a much less generic sound than most people would conclude today based on stereotypes of a metal head, being basically a dirty stupid grunt, which in most cases is far from the truth.

Personal experience has taught me one thing, there are two types of metal heads, those who listen just because it’s loud and you can throw fists, which is the category that metal fans take the rep for. And then on the entirely opposite side, the fans who are some of the smartest people you could come into contact with, they listen to the music for its technicality and live for it all. Today though, there is more of a mix in between the two although metal still gets called on and stereotyped over the get out and fight types. This CD gives the best of both worlds, with new thrash bands like Children of Bodom appealing to a wide fan base including those in both categories that have just been named, as well as older bands including Black Sabbath and Rush to give credit to the beginnings of metal and older fans.

All in all, this soundtrack is a good pickup for either the blossoming metal head who is just getting interested in metal. Then it also serves as a compilation for the seasoned headbanger. It is a good addition to a CD library, sounding like a playlist on an ipod. I give Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey soundtrack 7.8 out of 10 for offering a taste of many categories in metal all compiled into one compact disc.  [ END ]

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Run Time: 1:16:17