I was dragged along to a film festival to see this by a mate after he convinced me based solely on a picture of a fat metalhead playing an inflatable pink guitar at an unnamed concert. Thus I was expecting something pretty cheesy and maybe a bit of fun. What a surprise Metal: A Headbangers Journey turned out to be. The guy who made it, Sam Dunn is a anthropologist and metalhead who treats his subject both seriously and with a bit of humour and his love for what he is describing, as well as obviously deep knowledge of the subject, goes a long way to making Metal: AHJ so worthwhile. It has an excellent global rather than US or British focus and covers everything from the roots of metal to all it's various past and present incarnations with almost all of the information coming from either band members themselves, fans or interested third parties from various academic backgrounds. The documentary is divided into sub-sections such as Roots, Controversy, Gender and Satanism and held together by following of our documentarian Sam as he conducts various interviews and visits festivals and countries like a touring band himself. Perhaps the most interesting part was the section on Black Metal, with interviews with both Norwegian church burners and advocates balanced against the Minister of one of said burnt churches without going the easy road into provocations and angry sniping. Every metalhead I know who saw this loved it (although equally everyone has some minor disagreement with the metal family tree Dunn presents) but equally everyone who I made watch it with me who was not into metal came away surprised at how interesting and enjoyable it was. Best moment: Ghaal from Gorgoroth's answer to "What is Black Metal?" (so dead serious but all the more hysterically funny for it). Complaints? Simply too short, even with all the extras on the second disk (many of which are excellent just as stand alone pieces-Lemmy is a highlight here too!) on DVD.