The Thousands

Heavy metal has been around for quite a while now and its fan base has never wavered. While trends in music can come and go – and their accolades with them – heavy metal fans are about as pig headedly loyal as they come.

Heavy metal has also apparently reached beyond stadiums and suburban living rooms, where you head-bang along to Guitar Hero, all the way up to Wadeye, NT. Vice‘s online video hub VBS travelled up there to profile the apparently violent local youth gangs, who divide their loyalties among some of the best (Slayer) metal bands to the worst (Evanescence), which resulted in the docu-short Heavy Metal Gangs in Wadeye.

The film offers a non-Four Corners look at contemporary Indigenous life which is pretty darn fascinating – and VBS’s focus on the music and the various mobs commitment to it (whether it be Metallica or Megadeath) stands alone as an interesting portrait of utterly devoted (however unlikely) metal fans. Sometimes they do say it best in the blurb: No matter how much you claim to like metal, you’ve got absolutely nothing on these kids.