In the new D.B. Weiss film Metal Lords, we’re taken on an angsty teen journey: Two best friends, Kevin (Jaeden Martell) and Hunter (Adrian Greensmith), decide to start a metal band in hopes of dominating the upcoming battle of the bands. Their missing puzzle piece? Emily (Isis Hainsworth), a cellist who catches Kevin’s eye — in more than one way — whom Hunter dubs the “Yoko” of their artistic journey. The movie has everything: high school friend fights, experimental teen wardrobes, a coming-of-age undertone and an impressive cast that appear to be... expert musicians?
Many a fan might be left wondering, “How real were those musical scenes from the movie?” Despite killer performances — replete with guitar shredding and drumming that looks all too real — it turns out that Martell, Greensmith and Hainsworth all had no experience in the metal rock world prior to signing on to the film. (In fact, only Greensmith — a jazz guitarist — had ever played an instrument before.) Enter their secret weapon: Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, whom Metal Lords writer D.B. Weiss dubbed the trio’s “chief metal counselor.” While working on the film, Morello acted as a coach for the three actors, teaching them everything from how to hold instruments to how to appreciate the entire metal aesthetic.
“Because they were not metalheads... it was very important for all of them to play the music correctly,” Morello tells Tudum. “They really did a great job as actors learning how to make it look exactly like they’re playing the [songs].”
Spoiler alert: Not actually playing their instruments!
To plausibly pull off their form behind the instruments, the actors practiced in their downtime from filming. Martell spent months working on a practice drum kit, while Hainsworth trained with cellist Vanessa Freebairn-Smith.
But there’s a big difference between knowing how to play and actually feeling the music, according to Morello. “When they were doing the penultimate scene [as they’re competing at battle of the bands], I thought, ‘Well, they need to forget all of that,’ ” Morello notes. “They were putting all their fingers in the right place and doing the work, but I’ve made like 114 different videos, and my fingers are never in the right place at any points of any of those 114 videos.”
According to Morello, who also makes a cameo in the film, the most important lesson these three metal-teens-in-training had to learn was the musical “feeling.” “You have to be inhabited by the holy spirit of heavy metal, and you have to go ape from beginning to end,” he continues. “When you think you’re doing it enough, you’re nowhere near doing it right. You have to go much further.”
To assist, Morello sent a mood board to Weiss for the actors, with “[Metallica frontman] James Hetfield screaming, a picture of a Jaguar roaring and a picture of a guy who looked like he just smashed a beer bottle over his head,” Weiss recalls.
The musician also “sent Jaeden a text about how hard you had to hit the drums,” Weiss continues. “I won’t do it justice by paraphrasing it, but it was hitting the drums so hard that it hurts, hitting the drums so hard that you’re happy… It was just this perfect encapsulation of how you need to play the drums to actually feel like a metal drummer. If you feel like a metal drummer, you’re going to look like a metal drummer.”
And the work paid off: Weiss admits that when he watched his actors perform, he wasn’t sure if they were playing or not. “[They] managed to fool me, which I figured was pretty good.”
Additional reporting by Josh Terry.
