Banger Films Official Blog

Japan – May 8-15, 2006

We have had some great opportunities to visit different parts of the world since making this doc (Norway, Bermuda, Austin, Sweded, etc…) but none can compare with Japan. I have wanted to visit japan for many years and to be able to travel with the film was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

We had one week to soak up as much as we could. The first couple of days were spent doing press for the Japanese release, so we did 25 interviews in two days! Thanks to Red Bull and some other mysterious Japanese concoctions we were able to battle through the jetlag and keep our engines firing. On the 3rd day we shot a mini-documentary for the Japanese version of the DVD that followed us around Tokyo interviewing different Japanese metal bands (hail Loudness) and visiting metal T-shirt shops, etc… in addition to interviewing Minoru of Loudness, we also met with Mirai of the avant-garde black metal band Sign and Mr. Ono, probably Japan’s biggest metal expert (he was the first person in Japan to interview Led Zeppelin!). In these interviews we talked about the relationship between Japanese culture and metal music and learned a little something about samurais and forest dieties along the way. We also plan to incorporate some of this material into our next film, “Global Metal”.

The most memorable chapter of our Japanese visit (with our visit to a rather eerie Deep Purple-inspired rock bar called Blackmore’s coming a close second) was meeting ex-Megadeth guitar wizard Marty Friedman. Marty has been living in Japan for years, speaks fluent Japanese, plays guitar on a kids’ variety show call “Fujiyama” and apparently has a soft spot for J-Pop and, believe it or not, the Polish death metal band Decapitated. Go Figger! He interviewed us for a Japanese pop culture mag and gave us some great support for the film. Definitely a surreal moment to be hanging with Marty in Tokyo…

But then again this pic of scot with a group of Geishas in the backstreets of Kyoto may be the most surreal of ‘em all. Let me hear you say “Geisha Metal”…