Film Review: Come On Feel The Noize: The Story Of How Rock Became Metal (2017)

SYNOPSIS:

Exclusive, long-lost live material from rock’s most iconic bands &artists, as well as all-new original interviews with the living legends themselves: This film is your access-all-areas backstage pass to Heavy Metal and Hard Rock history. Delve into the rich history of Heavy Metal: from its scandalous origins in the 1960s to its heyday in the 1980s, from its glam phase in the 1970s to its indestructible present in 2017. A backstage pass into the history of how Rock became Heavy Metal.

REVIEW:

“Come On Feel The Noize: The Story Of How Rock Became Metal” is one of the latest rockumentaries on the historic movements of rock and roll. While it’s common place to just Google up a free documentary thru Youtube, it’s less commonplace to find professionally produced documentaries that reality take the time to cover alot of ground that isn’t just another “behind the scenes” VH1 production. This production focuses on one of my favorite music styles, Heavy Metal.

(For those who are confused, this piece also went under the name of “Cum on Feel the Noize” which appears to have been slightly renamed for marketing purposes.)

Created by Cleopatra Studios and directed by Jörg Sonntag, this 90 minute piece takes a different direction than other music films productions I’ve seen over the years. “Come On Feel The Noize” is a more comprehensive overview of its historical roots. I say this as a direct participant in the heavy metal era.

The era, at the time, felt like the norm for how rock and roll should remain, but of course like eras before it had its run before moving onto other styles and other focuses. The one thing worth really commenting here is that most of these “metal years” documentaries tend to focus on a few token musical acts without really expanding beyond those few to give a true insight and overview of what the scene was like. I of course am talking about bands like: Motley Crue, Poison, Van Halen, Ratt and (sometimes) Quiet Riot. Now for us true metal fans, those bands were really just a portion of what they might call the L.A. metal scene or its latter used term “hair metal” rather than the complete picture of musical talents.

Though surprisingly and most likely due to the director being a foreigner, this documentary mentions only a few of those usual suspect groups to allow for a wider gamut of music acts, regions, and historical influences. This in itself was quite refreshing. The film begins with how and who influenced the next generation of music acts (the focal of this documentary). Acts such as T.Rexx, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin are discussed as influential paths into this new era. The blues scene, the punk scene, and the underground scene additionally serving as conduits to a particular specific sound and music style. More so, as described, a particular “attitude” that was embraced by musicians to be expanded on.

These aspects drove a louder, heavier (and often prettier) sound that became the style of heavy metal presentations during that time. On a regional basis there was additional influences coming over from Britain, Sweden, Asia, and overseas that also embraced this particular attitude (though doing it in their own unique ways). The terms, death metal, dark metal and speed metal would come later adding a 2nd level to the already louder aspects of metal. Slightly more hardcore in approach and appearance they would also get lumped into this whole spectrum of “heavy metal bands”. The piece in itself takes us on a journey to help define how the term “heavy metal” came into existence and looks at the parts that defined it.

Come On Feel The Noize: The Story Of How Rock Became Metal is about this journey, not just the journey of Twisted Sister, Motley Crue and Poison but the whole generation of music acts to emerge. Well told, well documented, and extremely well interviewed it is a solid 90 minutes of historical music entertainment. It is not just an overview, but also gets great interview content from leading heavy metal authorities such as Ozzy, Dee Snider, Sixx: A.M, Doro,”Biff” Byford and many others!

I was impressed by the comprehensive nature of this piece and the effort that went into it’s research. By no means could every metal band of this generation get coverage but there is certainly quite alot to consume. I myself enjoyed the deeper insight into overseas metal that usually is ignored (aka Motorhead, Saxon, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Warlock).The documentary even goes so far as to do a small feature of the Satanic metal band “Ghost”.

In all, there is alot of content here and alot to enjoy over the 90 minute span. “Come On Feel The Noize: The Story Of How Rock Became Metal” is one worth the purchase and one to watch again. As a fan, listener, and participant in that metal scene, I highly enjoyed the work invested here to bring this presentation to light.

Come On Feel The Noize: The Story Of How Rock Became Metal is now available on DVD