Metal Lords premieres Friday, April 8 on Netflix.
Metal Lords, written by Game of Thrones EP D.B. Weiss, never quite turns it up to 11 the way its attitude suggests. In the vein of The School of Rock, Metal Lords centers on two high school best friends navigating adolescence while kinda-sorta gearing up for a Battle of the Bands (that old movie chestnut), in search of a bassist who can help turn them into a real band and not just an experimental act. There are silly moments here and there, and an appropriately triumphant climax, but too much of Metal Lords is stuck in an riff that's not quite funny enough and never really satisfying.
When teen tropes are played correctly, they can sing out and work like a charm. Here they land flat, with no effort put into making the bully anything more than a bore, the mean dad anything but unnecessarily boorish, and the female lead anything but dependent on having one of the two leads boys in her scene. English actress Isis Hainsworth is sparingly fun as the cellist, Emily, who just might make Skullfucker the greatest metal band ever, though she's never allowed to have a scene unto herself. Despite what the Metal Lords poster insists, this a two teen movie. It's the story of Kevin (It's Jaeden Martell) and Hunter (Adrian Greensmith) and Emily gets left in the dust as the movie never takes advantage of her as character the way it should. She very quickly becomes Kevin's broken pixie girl.
Though the film is steeped in metal lore, and even features some metal/rock greats in surprising cameos (plus huge metal fan Joe Manganiello in a small role), it's less of a "misfits form an alliance to rock out and make the most of their suburban trappings" tale than it is the story of one angry, obsessed metal fan, Hunter, sort of forcing his best friend, the somewhat indifferent Kevin, to learn metal songs on the drums so he can achieve his own very narrow dreams. Sure, that route bucks certain conventions but it's also the least fun fun option here. The message the movie tries to make about what makes metal great and worthwhile gets drowned out in the clunkiness of the structure and characters.
Though Metal Lords is an R-rated affair, a consistent tone is never quite settled on. Swear words are rampant for sure, starting with the band's name of course, but when a movie involves whimsical coming-of-age moments, full stark nudity over an hour into the story feels jarring. Too much either falls flat, feels inert, or pulls you out because it's an odd fit.
Adrian Greensmith is quite good though, as the fiercely focused dreamer behind Skullfucker, and as an actor who can actually shred on the guitar (and was actually inspired to play it after watching The School of Rock). It helps the in-movie original metal song, "Machinery of Torment" (written by Weiss, Tom Morello, and Carl Restivo), truly rock. If Metal Lords leaves anything great in its wake, it's this track.
Oh, and music-wise, Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones, Westworld) provides the metal-riffic score.
You can tell that a lot of time and care was put into the metal worship here (with a few "hard rock" acts thrown in for good measure) though we're never given anything about Kevin and Hunter as characters beyond the very basics. It's as if the metal knowledge flowed easily but the character groundwork never got started. We know that Hunter's mom left and Kevin's family struggles to pay bills, and it's just known out of the gate that they've been friends for a long time, but it all feels unfinished. They still get better layering, as little as there is, than Emily, who barely resonates sadly, but it's not enough to meet the metal aspects halfway. Kevin narrates at times, which would have provided an opportunity to create more depth, but that aspect is never used effectively at all.
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