Thrill ’em all

Portland filmmaker Nick Wells lives and breathes the metal head spirit, and he’s working hard to share it with local moviegoers. His latest film, Metal Messiah: Born Again Sage, premiered September 2010 at Laurelhurst Theater and ran for a weekend last term at Portland State’s 5th Avenue Cinema.

Most ordinary Hollywood films about metal are produced by people that have no grasp whatsoever of what makes metal special. But Metal Messiah is no ordinary film, and Wells is no ordinary filmmaker.

He is not some metal-loving poseur, and the music isn’t some new-found hobby for him. His knowledge of the genre is virtually encyclopedic, and the sheer enthusiasm with which he talks about metal would interest even the squarest layperson.

The Vanguard recently caught up with Wells to discuss thrash metal, Phil Donahue and Third Eye Blind.

“Back in ’84 I had a Pee Chee folder, where I took the time to do a perfect Metallica logo on one side and a perfect Manowar logo on the other,” Wells said.

Metal Messiah tells the story of Sage Negadeth, a hesher dead-set on starting the heaviest metal band around. Everything goes awry when his band is forced apart and he has to choose between good and evil. Featuring an appearance by the devil himself, the film is cheerfully, self-consciously over the top.

With a DVD release in the works, everything about the film has to be perfect. And it all starts with the first thing filmgoers see: the printed artwork. The posters, designed by Canada’s Yannick Bouchard, feature sepia shots of just about every era of metal and are as sensationalistic as you can imagine.

“We got in touch with Bouchard through Heaven & Hell Records, and they said they’d distribute the DVD—so we needed a pop-ier cover,” Wells said. “They wanted something like National Lampoon’s Vacation.”

The logo was designed by April Jones, a local artist.

“I wanted to get away from the idea of finding a metal font and downloading it,” Wells said. “I [would] not do the Metallica or Iron Maiden fonts.”

Because the cover pays slight homage to The Jazz Singer, Metal Messiah uses that movie’s font.

Wells strived to make the movie—the ending, in particular—as exaggerated as the concerts he attended in his youth.

“When I saw Dio, he had a replica of Egypt on stage. During the song ‘The Last in Line,’ a giant three-headed cobra came out of the pyramid,” Wells said. “The guitar player battled the cobra with a laser attached to his guitar, and Dio himself had a laser whip.”

Wells leans forward, eyes alight.

“Iron Maiden, for [the] Powerslave [tour]…they, too, had a giant pyramid, a robot Terminator hand lifted the whole drum set,” Wells said. “Using fairly cheesy but not entirely terrible special effects, I have a similar ending. I don’t want to give it away!”

Though likely a coincidence, Hollywood itself is hot on Wells’ heels. Tom Cruise, of all actors, is starring in Rock of Ages, due out this June. The movie bears a striking, almost blatant resemblance to Wells’ film. Before fingers are pointed, Wells’ movie premiered in the fall of 2010 and was conceived and produced long before.

“I don’t know if I want Rock of Ages to bomb,” Wells laughed. He hints at mainstream media’s flirtation with metal, citing Marilyn Manson’s interview on Donahue in the ’90s about the topic of moshing and “violence” at concerts.

“The ’80s and ’90s lifted the last taboos of metal,” Wells said.

And here we are, with Tom Cruise playing a character named Stacee Jaxx, in a movie directed by Adam Shankman, famous for Cheaper By the Dozen 2 and the rip-roaring Zac Efron’s Pool Party.

While such tomfoolery might fly in Hollywood, Wells’ film is home-grown all the way down to the soundtrack and inspiration.

“[Local metal band] Panzergod provided the music for the movie,” Wells said. Among other metal staples like Candlemass, Mercyful Fate and Dark Angel, another of Wells’ favorite local bands is Red Fang. “Their style just works for me.”

The thing about being a lifelong metal head is that there are certain bands you carry with you—and worship—for life. Among those is Slayer, and Wells hopes to get a copy of Metal Messiah into the band’s possession.

“I have tried to see if I can get the trailer or even the movie in front of [Slayer vocalist and bassist] Tom Araya,” Wells said. “I have a couple slight needle drops of Slayer in the movie, but I am wearing Slayer shirts, I have Slayer posters [as decoration]. I went ahead and did it, but I feel like they’d be cool with it.”

Other equally influential metal figures have reached out to Wells, though.

“Schmier of [metal band] Destruction gave me permission to use music in the movie,” Wells said. “I got [metal band] Dark Angel’s permission [also].”

Feedback among metal mainstays has been limited, but what feedback exists comes from a trusted source.

“Brian Slagel of Metal Blade [Records] saw the trailer and said it ‘looked like it could be a good cult movie,’” Wells said. “[His] is just about the best feedback I’ve gotten.”

But feedback and approval exists in all forms—just ask the primary backer of the movie, Tony Fredianelli. He used to play metal guitar for a band called Apocrypha, but you might know him better as a founding member of Third Eye Blind.

“We’re small time metallers with big time dreams,” Wells said.

The dream is where that spirit exists, and that spirit lies within anyone willing to accept it.