Metacritic reviews

Superbly crafted documentary is strong enough to make believers out of non-metalheads, and inside enough to get the devil's-horns salute from the most diehard followers.

There's so much information and so many finely honed arguments in this ultimately joyous film that it's liable to send audiences scurrying home to their computers to download the bands they've just heard.

It'll make you want to dig out your Whitesnake T-shirt. It might even convince Tipper Gore that heavy metal thunder is all in good fun.

At once playful and thorough, the documentary is also stacked teased-hair high with wicked performance footage.

Sam Dunn's unabashed wet kiss to his favorite genre of music, heavy metal, a.k.a. devil's music.

Dunn says he's been defending his choice in music since he was 12, and the film is a carefully organized and thoughtful argument for the merits of metal.

Metal culture is a giant topic, and Dunn has made an ambitious stab at it, exploring the music's social, religious, and sexual implications.

As charming as Dunn's kid-in-a-candy-store exploration is at times, it's apparent that his ''anthropological" take on the scene isn't much more than the love letter he always dreamed of writing to his headbanging pals.

A documentary that preaches to the converted if ever there was one, but Dunn's enthusiasm for the subject and the range of pretension and humour of his interviewees makes for fun viewing.

Mr. Dunn and his colleagues dig up some interesting information during their inquiry, like the origins of the devil-horns hand signal, metal's signature salute, but their insider love of the music finally proves as big an obstacle to the film as their ploddingly pedagogic approach.