Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – ‘As The Palaces Burn’
Written by Gaz E
Sunday, 02 March 2014 03:30
‘As The Palaces Burn’ (Epic Records in association with 9.14 Pictures)
When Randy Blythe rolls out the oft-used “music is the reason I’m not dead or in prison” line, favoured by rock stars in interviews, at the start of this engrossing film the facts that the viewer now knows compared to what the Lamb Of God frontman knew when he was letting the words spill out of his mouth are polar opposites.
A similar thing could be said about the film that director Don Argott set about making and the one he ultimately delivered.
Envisaged as a different take on the standard rock doc, ‘As The Palaces Burn’ started as film devoted to Lamb Of God fans, rather than Lamb Of God itself: so, interspersed with the expected on-the-road footage and talking heads – Slash and Gwar’s Oderus Urungus appear – the cameras follow devoted LOG fans around the world, tales of how the band’s music has saved lives and given kids in faceless towns and cities a true sense of identity and individuality.
The band footage that makes up the opening portion of the film doesn’t shy away from the true feelings of its members some decade and a half after they formed: the strain of leaving families to tour the world obvious, the strain of dealing with a band member hellbent on letting his alcoholic tendencies get the better of him and common decency more immediate; the clips of band infighting and fist fighting a sad reflection of tense tour bus life, the claims that the band members were “far from best friends” more so.
And this material would be enough to make a movie with enough meat on the bone to quell the hunger of the most ravenous of metal muthas…
…and then it happens…
You know it’s coming, you’re just not sure how it’s going to be portrayed, or if it even partly resembles the account of it that you’ve formed in your mind since fragmented pieces of information broke of the shocking news.
Just a third of the way into the running time Lamb Of God touches down in Prague on the way to one of the many European festivals that the band is renowned for laying waste to. The law enforcement officers waiting for the band signals the beginning of a saga that threatens to unravel the band’s inner sanctum ever further, but, instead, galvanises the members as they travel through all manners of personal hell.
Any self-respecting rock/metal fan will know the story by now: nineteen year old Daniel Nosek died after sustaining head injuries at a 2010 Lamb Of God show in Prague and falling into a coma. Upon the band’s return to the Czech Republic two years later, frontman Randy Blythe was arrested and charged with causing the fan’s death.
With bail set and ultimately refused on the reasoning that Blythe would not return to the country to face trial, the singer would spend thirty-eight days in prison as the rock world came together in support of the musician.
Manna from Heaven for a filmmaker, you’d think: this most attention-grabbing scenario gifted to a storyteller in the right place at the right time. But Argott, to his credit, doesn’t dictate as to how the viewer should feel about the charges that would eventually see Randy Blythe in front of three judges in a Prague courtroom. No, the director simply points the camera at the events as they reveal themselves, with no clichéd voiceover or formulaic plot devices to be seen anywhere.
As unbiased as the film could possibly be considering the filmmaker was actually amongst the Lamb Of God camp as the situation became graver by the day, Argott has delivered a piece of work that, essentially, documents the strengthening of bonds between five men who would admit to having let the ties that bind them, personally at least, unwind a little.
Emotional moments wait at every turn: fan-filmed concert footage purportedly showing Nosek stage-diving at the band’s Prague show, of him being dragged back off the lip of the stage by a security guard and hitting his head on a barrier; Randy Blythe’s return to the U.S. where he is greeted at the airport by his bandmates; Lamb Of God’s first show at the Slipknot festival following the singer’s release. But these moments pale into insignificance when compared to the statement given in the courtroom by Daniel’s uncle: for lest we forget, as much as we, as fans of rock and metal music, wanted Randy Blythe to be cleared of all charges against him, a kid, at a time in his young life where we’ve all been, lost his life purely because he went to a rock show.
Facts revealed are handled sensitively, and as unrevelatory as they surely wouldn’t be in the hands of tabloid-afflicted journalists, Blythe’s eventual exoneration treated with a sense of relief and feeling that justice had been served rather than a carnival of high-fives and hoorahs.
‘As The Palaces Burn’, given a limited theatrical release in the U.K. almost a year to the day that Blythe walked free from that Prague courtroom, is as powerful a documentary as you will see this year, its subject matter the human condition rather than heavy metal.
Ultimately, the film reminds us that, no matter how many albums a band sells, no matter how high they climb on the Billboard chart, the general consensus will never really understand what goes on at a heavy metal show, how fans are united by the music, how frustrations are poured out through riffs and screams and headbangs.
Yes, ‘As The Palaces Burn’ reminds us of all these things, but does so with head bowed in remembrance rather than with its horns in the air. Nobody should leave home to rock out at a metal gig and never return, of that thought we must always be aware.
