VH1’s Metal Month 20 Years Later: The Major Parts.

(TheBRHM.com) At the time of this piece, the 20^th anniversary of VH1’s “Metal Month” would’ve just passed. You could also look at it as a way to use all those music videos and films that weren’t aired on VH1 Classic at the time. Maybe it was a vehicle for their reality- band show Supergroup which gave us the very shortly-lived act Damnocracy.

Let’s look at the three things that really reignited my interest in metal music in 2006. For context, I started back listening to rock music in 2004 via Fuse TV covering the “Van’s Warped Tour”. That led to me discovering Uranium hosted by Mistress Juliya. Uranium introduced me to a lot of modern metal and metalcore bands but I wasn’t getting that history of the genre.

I was purchasing metal compilations through mail order in 2005 but I was listening to a lot hip-hop and the pop punk bands Fuse had in heavy rotation. When VH1 began pushing “Metal Month”, my interest was piqued and I would be tuning in.

Re-Airing Headbanger’s Ball

While not the biggest factor in me diving into metal, the re-runs of Headbanger’s Ball introduced me to a lot of bands from the 80s that caught my imagination. I remember staying up late and writing down band names even though I had classes to instruct the next morning.

It was in those airings that I first discovered Judas Priest and Dio through the videos for “Breaking the Law” and “Rainbow in the Dark”. Hearing their vocals made me a vocals-first fan since I love storytelling and imagery.

By the next month, I had Metal World ’73-’93 and checked out a bunch of Dio and Black Sabbath albums from the library. So, it was pretty effective in getting me interested.

Heavy: The Story of Metal

I’m a documentary fan and a metal documentary is something I’m going to set time aside for. Narrated by MTV OG and 120 Minutes host Matt Pinfield, Heavy covered the major bits of metal history.  The short of it is a focus on the hard rock influence, a little bit on punk, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the 80s boom period, thrash, glam, and the 90s.

The major bits since it only had four 40+ minute episodes to get it all in. Hell, the 90s episode (the last in the docuseries) focused more on the rise of alternative and grunge before getting into nu metal.

At time, I found it to be an engaging film but I was pretty new to metal, so I learned a lot. Looking at it more recently after listening to a lot of metal over the years and reading biographies, it was more of a decent crash course.

Think of it as a cheese sample at the supermarket. Technically barely a bite but who knows, you might just stick around.

Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey

While Heavy was a sample, Sam Dunn’s Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey was more like a two or three plate run at the buffet. There was still that “this is a good starting place to learn” factor that I get from Heavy years later but there was more of a dive into the history and origins of the genre.

The addition of the metal family tree was very helpful because it introduced bands not shown in the Headbanger’s Ball re-runs or in Heavy. It introduced a couple of subgenres, featured interviews with musicians of varying levels of success and influence, and gave us the filmmaker’s story of his love for metal.

It was an honest documentary that spawned Global Metal which explored more of the international metal scene and history and the series Metal Evolution.

Supergroup

While it didn’t have an impact on me diving into metal and becoming a fan, I guess we can’t end this with discussing Supergroup. I watched it in the first run of the show and  it was…reality TV.  It wasn’t exactly Rock of Love (which probably also aired during “Metal Month”) or Flavor of Love but more like Real World with old rockers.

It featured drama in form of stress over making new music with a band including Sebastian Bach formerly of Skid Row, Jason Bonham son of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham and formerly of UFO and Foreigner, Ted Nugent, Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard, and Scott Ian of Anthrax.

There was also some drama around Bach’s drinking in the show but he came through at end during the band’s debut show. That was the show. It was entertaining at times but it wasn’t worth the watch then or worth a rewatch now. If anything, I checked out Anthrax and early Skid Row while learning about the band members.

Do you remember VH1’s “Metal Month”? What were your favorite or least favorite parts of it? Pick your memory and share in the comments!