I've certainly seen better rockumentaries, but then again I've seen a lot of them, and most of them featured (much) better bands than this one does. For such a film to work you don't necessarily have to like the music that's featured, but it does help to keep things (more) interesting. Because if you don't like the music, then the story is under pressure to be that much better, to be bloody fine, as "compensation".
It's only somewhat fine. I found myself slightly fidgety during parts of it, it doesn't grip you as it should. It tends to be slightly repetitive, plus the live footage that's supposed to spice things up just ends up being boring. But hey: it's (mostly) about sludge bands! Boring and sludge are practically synonyms.
The story of struggling but content(?) sludge Southerners is certainly quicker-paced than the incredibly boring "slow steel" that they mistakenly refer to as "great music", but that's not saying much, is it. Imagine a documentary as slow as "southern steel" metal itself: that film would be the equivalent of a Bergman drama - but one that Ingy himself ends up disowning because "it's way too slow and dreary".
One of the running themes is the brotherhood between the bands; they just all seem to get along, apparently. One southern sludger (sludgie?) said that unlike in NY, for example, or "up North", the southern metal scene doesn't thrive on and suffer from competition, bickering, jealousies and rivalries between bands, but everyone gets along great. It becomes obvious after a while that southern bands are generally less ambitious; that pretty much confirms this "brotherhood". I do wonder whether the lack of ambition and no sense of competition might be the main reason why coastal and/or northern U. S. bands are more successful than those from the "steely South". Competition is always a good thing, as long as it doesn't go too far: a good example of a healthy competition was the 80s Bay Area thrash scene; they were all friendly and hung out but were also very competitive (e.g. The friendly Death Angel vs. Violence rivalry), which helped push the envelope, make everyone try harder. Then again, thrash is the polar opposite of sludge. Fast, varied and explosive vs. Monotonous and dull. (No wonder thrash had its commercial peak and sludge never did - nor ever will.)
To illustrate how (relatively) weak the South's metal scene is, watch the 48th minute, because the movie itself does the job wonderfully. Here the overly serious narrator lists in a very meaningful voice 6 "metal greats" from this region, but all the musicians listed are either overrated (Phil Anselmo), totally useless (Pepper Keenan) or totally unknown even by me (unknown guys from irrelevant bands). I had to snicker during that bit because it's unintentionally funny. A great way to "prove" a point or what!
Speaking of the unlikable narrator, who is a bit on the self-important pompous side, he practically has to APOLOGIZE for the South's alleged "racism" - as if these bands were part of some deranged skinhead scene, as if this movie should be about defending the South, as if every bloody documentary about the South has to be about racism, as if racism is the be-all-end-all of all topics and subjects and has to find its way into every soup, and as if the South was some kind of ex-Nazi Germany and needed "rehabilitating"; as if racism only exists there! That kind of generic "politically correct meekness", for want of a better term, exhibited by the film-makers is highly irritating. You can just tell when cowards, zombies and other meek people suck up to "The Man", to the Establishment, by saying exactly what the Rulers want to hear from them. Good little parrot! Nice and obedient.
I have mixed feelings about the topic of the Confederate flag coming up here. On the one hand, it's good that southerners themselves get a chance to clear up misunderstandings by explaining what exactly the flag means (i.e. That it denotes and symbolizes hatred only to clueless East/West kids from urban areas who think they know everything because they watch a lot of Hollywood movies - for example certain (not all) arrogant deluded elitist NYers who are completely clueless about most essential things yet seem to believe they're all-knowing intellectuals), revealing the stigma that politically-correct America (i.e. The media, Hollywood and the two brainwashed coasts) had attached to this flag, and mostly unfairly. On the other hand, I am once again annoyed, because it just gave the pompous film-makers an excuse to expand the subject of racism. May I repeat again: this is supposed to be a METAL documentary, not a social study of race-relations! Let's try to stick to the subject at hand, huh? We don't discuss Putin in a penguin documentary, now do we?
Besides which, the more Americans obsess over racism and the more they hammer home propaganda that they attach to this topic (that's right, kids, they use anti-racism lectures to inject left-wing propaganda which means they're not really concerned about racism but other, more nefarious, things), the worse racism will get. Or does anyone believe things are getting better in America over the last few decades regarding racism? No, Obama getting elected twice doesn't prove anything. It only additionally proves just how bad presidential candidates have been since the 90s.
See, the movie even made me rant about it! I wrote several paragraphs about racism already despite reviewing a music documentary. I am so completely easy to manipulate. Please, biased media journalists, muppeteer me around a little more, so I can talk yet MORE about racism! Racism this racism that, enough already... There are far worse - and more curable - problems than racism. The more you lambaste people for real or imagined racist behaviour the more they're likely to become even more racist rather than less. Nobody likes being harassed, about anything.
Anyway, back to music. I find it hilarious that slow-livin', supposedly "lazy", laid-back Southerners - some of whom even talk slowly - invented(?) a type of metal such as sludge. Anybody see the comedy in that? Cletus likes his metal slow and boring, sort of like sitting on a porch and watching chickens slowly go by. Kind of makes sense.
OK, now I'm being just as bad as the NYers (who delusionally think they're superior to Middle America, morally as well as intellectually).
There is also absurdity in how the "unhip" South is the home of sludge metal - which is hipster metal. And hipster metal draws in kids from non-Southern regions mostly - many of whom have prejudices against the South. I love ironies.
The film features a plethora of bands, perhaps as many as 30, most of them obscure and some of them downright devoid of fandom - because how else to explain the fact that several of them aren't even included on major music sites. Unless of course the band-members themselves can count themselves as their own fans - which would then mean they have fans after all! (I couldn't resist that.) The notable exceptions are Pantera, Lamb of God (I had no clue they were from the South), Eyehategod, C. O. C. And perhaps even Buzzoven which I've vaguely heard of. The South sure has a rich history of top-notch metal... or not.
To be fair, D. R. I., one of the greatest metal bands, are Texans, and get mentioned very briefly but none of their members are featured. So why are D. R. I always sidelined in rockumentaries about hardcore and the South? This band has easily more value than all the 30 featured here, combined.
To be even fairer, the film never purported to show that the South is a metal capital or anything like that.
Why "southern steel" isn't nearly as good as "northern steel" (Canada, Scandinavia) or "western steel" or "eastern steel" and very few of their bands had any major success, even in the underground, might be found in the music many of the band members point out to as their main influences while growing up. You guessed it: rap "music"! Well, no friggin' wonder "southern steel" is so lame compared to other regions' "steels"! If your ears are so weak that they "recognize" rap as great music, then why even attempt to make "serious" music? How can rap possibly influence you to write good music?! That'd be like Nazism inspiring you to be kind to children and cats. And it's no excuse that they liked rap when they were kids: I wuz a kid too once (believe it or not) and I absolutely hated rap from the first time I heard it, and still hate it with a burning passion. (I hate the undeserved media hype more than the music itself, actually.) I don't ever want to hear a musician saying rap influenced him growing up - or actually, come to think of it, I do wanna hear that so it can serve as a warning to stay away from their (almost certainly bad) music.
The movie's biggest plus is that it features the South, precisely because it's such a peculiar region that has many cliches and prejudice attached to it - and against it.
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