Irregular Film have just released a free short documentary on YouTube about the oldest metalhead in Vietnam, who was there from the wartime origins of rock music in Vietnam, through the post-war prohibition where he risked jail by performing illicit shows to the underground, up to the present day where he keeps on rockin’ against an entirely new set of struggles.
The musical landscape of Vietnam is a dismal place for a metalhead. After the liberation of Saigon in 1975 the new government saw rock music as a dangerous western influence and banned it for over a decade, dealing a near-killing blow to a thriving scene in its infancy. Saigon Metalhood is the story of 3 generations of headbangers whose combined experiences comprise the history of Vietnamese metal from wartime origins to the present day struggle.
The story is divided into three chapters: past, present and future, and told through a mixture of personal interviews, archival footage, and concert narratives. The grizzled grandfather of the scene, Trung Thanh Sago, shares his unique life and tells the untold history of Vietnamese metal. Trung Loki was the brooding vanguard of the scene’s most successful era, but has his troubled past ensured a difficult and lonely future? And finally, the young metal entrepreneurs who formed an agency with an ambitious goal. Can they really make Vietnamese metal internationally relevant?
Saigon Metalhood: Vietnam’s Heaviest Story is available on Vevo.
