To Hunter Sylvester, heavy metal music is the distilled essence of angry rebellion itself. He plasters his walls with it; he drowns his tormented mind with it; he wails on his guitar with it whenever he has a moment spare. Metal is Hunter’s way to unleash his rage at his father in particular and at the world in general.
To Kevin Schlieb, metal is … well, he’s not all that sure what it is, other than noisy. OK, it’s friendship, that’s what it is. Kevin only has one friend, really. And if Hunter wants him to bang on a drum set because Kevin plays drums (well, drum actually) in marching band, then Kevin will loyally oblige.
But quite frankly, as a band they’re kinda awful. Hunter can pick out his growling notes pretty well (he’s had enough practice), but Kevin is just cluelessly banging away. After one bashing noise-fest rehearsal, it strikes Hunter that what they really need to make the sound gel, is a bass player. Yeah, that’ll do it.
So, while Kevin shrugs and walks away to actually listen to some of Hunter’s favorite bands—Judas Priest, Metallica, Iron Maiden and others—Hunter gets to work on finding a bassist.
Hey, they even find out that there’s a school Battle of the Bands coming up in a couple weeks. They just need to win it, land some consequential gigs, and they’ll be on their way to being heavy metal gods!
It could happen.
Of course, there is just one tiny problem. Nobody in their high school would ever dream of joining a band with a couple of dweebs like them. And the only person that Kevin can even think of as a possibility is a girl from marching band named Emily. She’s kinda unstable—ready to fly into a raging cuss-fest if she hasn’t taken her meds—and she’s absolutely trash on a clarinet. But on cello, Emily’s pretty stinking awesome.
Does a cello count as a bass in heavy metal?
Hunter hates the idea. And Kevin hates the argument about it. But in the tug-and-pull interim, Kevin realizes that he doesn’t hate Emily one bit. In fact, in her own quirky, properly medicated way, she’s pretty awesome in every department. They just have to work things out. I mean, “godhood” awaits.
Hunter, Kevin and Emily all share this movie’s spotlight, but Kevin is really the central protagonist here. And we see him learn some positive lessons about loyalty—both to a friend and to a girl who shows him kindness and love.
Kevin has his chances to abandon both Hunter and Emily, but his common sense overrides temptation. In one imaginary scene, a metal music pro even asks him pointed questions about doing the right thing by the people he loves. After that, Kevin declares: “You don’t turn your back on the people who love you!” Kevin later makes it clear to Emily that she is perfect just as she is, in spite of her broken side. And he proclaims his need for connection to both Hunter and Emily.
Hunter and Emily, for their part, learn a bit about growing up as well. Hunter—who’s been incredibly angry at his father for several reasons—comes to grips with how best to approach their relationship. Elsewhere, the three of them all apologize for past wrongs. And the film points out that compromise and friendship are both valuable parts of life.
Hunter’s basement practice room is covered in posters of metal bands and other related images. Many of those pictures (and some of Hunter’s own hand-written music) sport pentagrams and demonic symbols. Hunter revels in the anti-religious, anti-establishment nature of those symbols—even using a devil’s horn hand sign repeatedly. In fact, a kid at school named Robbie smiles and waves at Hunter at school and calls out, “Hail, Satan!” in his direction.
Some of the metal tunes we hear have dark spiritual messages in their lyrics. A Black Sabbath song references “witches at black masses.” Hunter copies that vibe in his lyrics and in a flyer he hangs up in school advertising his group’s bass player auditions. “What would Satan do?” the wanted poster asks.
Kevin and Emily meet for a sexual tryst in the parking lot of a Jewish Temple. While talking in class about historic figures and “metal” attitudes throughout history, Hunter notes, “People on the Mayflower would have been metal if it weren’t for all that Jesus crap.”
We see several teens after a wedding reception who have been swimming in various states of undress in the pool. Some are fully naked from the back and side, both boys and girls. (A completely naked guy covers his crotch as he runs by.) One girl in a hot tub—dressed in her underwear which she drunkenly displays—beckons Kevin to strip and join her. He does so. But while she snuggles up to kiss his neck, he decides to just leave (with imagined metal musicians talking to him about the pros and cons of his actions).
Kevin does, however, hook up with Emily. They climb into the back of a van for an implied “first time” together. (She asks him to “bring a thingie for your thingie.”) And later, they kiss a bit and snuggle close (while both dressed) in her room.
Hunter gets angry at his dad for his rampant sexual trysts.
Some teen girls sport some low-cut, cleavage-baring tops.
One of the reasons that Hunter uses for not letting Emily join their band with a cello is the fact that it “would be completely gay!” Emily then looks around the room at all of Hunter’s metal band posters. Some of them seem to feature homoerotic imagery, including barely dressed, leather-clad men as well as one animated drawing that features a devil-like character with enormous genitalia.
Bullies pick on both Hunter and Kevin. But Hunter gets the worst of it, because he tends to push back. The guys shove him around and punch him in the stomach. At one point they pull him under a stairway and cut off one side of his long hair. One jock shoulders Kevin to the ground.
After a conflict, Hunter and Kevin find themselves in a high-speed chase through town with a truck full of aggressive athletes behind them. They escape by speeding through a narrow alley while the speeding truck crashes into the tight alley entrance. Later, the bullies slash Hunter’s tires, smash his car’s windshield and write profanities on his car.
At one point when Hunter and Kevin are playing on stage, bullies in the crowd are kept from causing havoc by the fact that the audience transforms into something of a shoving, thumping mosh pit. One guy gets through and topples equipment that smashes someone’s leg, causing a brutally twisted break.
Emily gets very angry; in her rage, she hits someone in the head with a chair (offscreen). The sole auditioner for a position as group bass player is really quite terrible. But he does enjoy kicking chairs over and smashing stuff.
Hunter dresses up in full leather metal regalia to storm a party. He’s stopped when a security guard thumps him in the crotch with his nightstick.
The language here slaps viewers around with its crudity. The main characters’ band name alone—Skullf—er—is spit out over and over, along with a score of other f-word combinations. Altogether we’re hit with some 70 f-words, more than 20 s-words, four c-words, and multiple uses each of “h—,” “b–ch” and “a–hole.” Crude references to male and female anatomy abound. And God’s and Jesus’ names are both abused once. Several people (and a poster) sport an offensive hand gesture.
While at a high school party, kids lounge around with beer and cups of hard liquor; we see empty bottles scattered about nearby tables.
Kevin gets quite drunk for the first time in his life which prompts him to actually talk to a pretty girl. “Beer is awesome!” he mentally notes. Soon after, he vomits all over himself. At a different party, Kevin once again gets drunk while swilling from a bottle of champagne. He then crawls into a hot tub with an equally inebriated teen girl before thinking better of it.
Hunter’s dad tends to drown his irritations (especially with his son) in a mixed drink.
Later, while talking to Kevin about the heavy metal music that he should be listening to and rehearsing with, Hunter tells him: “Learn it. Live it. Do lines of it in the bathroom!”
We see several prescription bottles on Emily’s nightstand. “My happy pills” she calls them. And she admits that even though she prefers not taking those prescribed drugs, when she skips them, her temperament becomes extremely volatile and erratic. In fact, we see her throw just such a screaming fit on two such occasions.
Hunter meets an adult who used to be part of an up-and-coming metal band. “Dude, you guys were gods,” Hunter gasps. The guy calmly retorts: “I was an alcoholic.” And he goes on to explain that drugs and alcohol destroyed their group.
For all of Hunter’s personal flaws, he notes that Emily is “one messed-up chick” when he first meets her. (Kevin, however, sees much more.)
Hunter has some nasty things to say at one point—using especially crude variations on the word “retard.” A teen recommends that he not let the school’s dean hear him say those things, since she’s an ambassador to the Special Olympics.
Metal Lords wants to position itself as a crude, kick-you-in-the soft spots comedy with a bit heart. It winkingly gazes at angsty teens who are purposely plunging their hormonal riot of adolescent feelings into a metal music world littered with thoughts of anarchy, satanic images and raw language. In fact, this pic declares that to be a heavy-metal lover (or to be a teen who feels like an outsider in general) you need to spew profanities that would blister any ear within hearing distance.
And that’s unfortunate, because underneath that pounding f-bomb deluge is a sincere and enjoyable story about likable teens who figure out how to grow up—both individually, collectively, and even romantically.
It would have made for a much better movie if these metal music lovers had upended and rebelled against the established and expected metal “norms”: if they had simply focused on the growling transformative music itself.
I mean, that would have been the “metal” thing to do, right?
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
