Three generations of musicians, representing the past, present, and future of Vietnamese metal, are given their due in this probing, good-natured documentary from the talented team of Sean Lambe and William Snyder (Faces You Forget: Nights Out in Saigon). In light of the country’s war-worn past, it stands to reason that the thrashing aggression of metal would be a perfect fit, but few in Vietnam are familiar with the genre. It was the government that sounded the death knell for death metal, hence the lack of awareness. (And the best tagline of 2020 goes to: “The only thing worse than being hated is being ignored.”) Trung Thanh first picked up a guitar at age 16, not long after American soldiers introduced rock to the Republic. Now age 60 and limited by a lack of concert venues, Thanh makes ends meet by teaching and playing at weddings. Fresh out of rehab at 31, grindcore virtuoso Trung Loki, long absent from the scene due to a mean meth addiction, is lucky to draw a smattering of fans to his hometown reunion show. And even before the film found a distributor, the Legacy Agency, a performance collective headed up by Hysterical Buffalo bassist Vu Nguyen, had disbanded. All three have one thing in common: they were perpetually ahead of their times in a country determined to remain musically backwards. Always the first to applaud an unmotivated scream (I love you, John Rambo) or a raspy howl to punctuate a joke (I miss you, Sam Kinison), metal vocals have always struck this listener’s ears as would the din of an Osterizer pulverizing a chunk of granite. That said, there’s enough performance footage to remind me why I have no affinity for the style, but not so much that I’m tempted to put a shoe through my flatscreen. And while I may not admire the end result, only a fool could shunt the level of ardor that went into telling this story. Find it at Vimeo on Demand. (2020) — Scott Marks
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