Director Peter Sollett (Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and writer D.B. Weiss (co-creator of Game of Thrones) team up to tell an unlikely (yet oh-so-relatable) tale of teenage rebellion in Netflix’s Metal Lords. Centering around a high school trio who don’t fit in for their own personal reasons—whether it be due to scrawny stature, niche cultural interests or fluctuating mental health issues—and, as a result, form a pretty kick-ass heavy metal band. The stakes are raised when the school announces a battle of the bands, accelerating their motivation to ditch their repertoire of Black Sabbath covers in favor of original songs. Before they can seriously improve, though, the pressure of constant practice and young romance drives a wedge between the friends, threatening to break up the band all together. Though much of the film feels like a heavy metal rip-off of School of Rock, Metal Lords reveals a deep-seated sincerity. Sure, the motivations of these characters are totally inane, and the narrative may appear desperately contrived. But the film’s lightheartedness and palpable high school schadenfreude keep Metal Lords from tipping over into uninspired pastiche.
Although most of his musical talent lies in playing the snare drum in marching band, Kevin (Jaeden Martell) is recruited by his best friend Hunter (Adrian Greensmith) to man the drum kit in his heavy metal band, edgily dubbed Skullfucker. While Kevin might not necessarily possess the chops to play “polyrhythms,” Hunter knows enough about the genre and its broader subculture to give his friend a general crash course. At a cinematically stereotypical high school rager, Hunter becomes enraged by Mollycoddle, a band-for-hire that sloppily plays Ed Sheeran covers. He truly believes Skullfucker to be totally superior, despite the band not even having a bass player yet. After an altercation between proto-jocks draws attention to the boys, Hunter hastily proclaims his self-assured opinion. Amused by his cockiness, the members of Mollycoddle insist on facing off properly at the school’s forthcoming battle of the bands—a challenge Hunter readily accepts. With only a few weeks to fine-tune their skills and find a bassist, Will hauls his massive drum kit to the high school’s music room to practice without disturbing his family’s neighbors. Coincidentally, a young British co-ed named Emily (Isis Hainsworth) happens to be playing the cello at the same time, leading Will to believe Skullfucker may just have found their bass player. Yet, Hunter quickly dismisses her, citing Emily’s girlish ringlets and sensible sweater collection as the antithesis to what constitutes heavy metal.
While the film’s premise is appealing enough in its coming-of-age charm, the central characters themselves are intensely grating. The audience should ostensibly relate to the experience of being a teenage outcast, but instead we are given a litany of reasons to root against them. Hunter is a self-obsessed, sniveling asshole whose obsession with heavy metal borders on lunacy. Emily is totally two-dimensional, save for her random trait of sporadically going off of her mood stabilizers, making her prone to expletive-riddled outbursts over minor inconveniences. Kevin, who serves as narrator and the film’s central protagonist, is so spineless that it’s perplexing why we’re following his interiority in the first place. However, their unlikability also transmits the noxious narcissism of being a young person, their every waking moment hyper-fixating on their respective cultural niches and the elusive prospect of getting laid. It’s hard to say if any of these characters truly “develop,” though—an odd stagnation for an age rife with personal experimentation and evaluation. There are tepid reconciliations, inner monologues and dramatic outfit changes—but that’s about as far as growth goes here.