How D.B. Weiss and Tom Morello's sons playing together in a band led to making Metal Lords
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For a movie about high school outcasts who find their escape through heavy metal music, it's appropriate that the idea for Metal Lords started in the hallways of a school. But Netflix's new coming-of-age comedy didn't come from the minds of teens who play together in a band — it actually came from their dads.
Of course, when those dads are Game of Thrones co-creator D.B. Weiss and legendary Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, it makes things feel a bit more legit.
Written and produced by Weiss with Morello as the executive music producer, Metal Lords stars Jaeden Martell and Adrian Greensmith as BFFs Kevin and Hunter who want to form a heavy metal band to shred at their high school's Battle of the Bands. The only problem? They can't find a bass player who'd rather play Black Sabbath than Ed Sheeran. "It's a movie about kids who feel like they don't fit in, learning to navigate their own lives and each other and how to not fit in together," Weiss tells EW.
"Metal Lords is this generation's rock & roll movie, that's it," Morello adds. "At a time where rock and heavy metal is not at the top of the charts, it's a reminder of the nascent power of this music to change people's lives. That's what it did for me — this music changed my life in a deeply real and profound way. And it's a reminder that the potential of people who are outsiders, who are on the periphery of the social castes in high school, have a latent potential within them that can be tapped, and that music is a conduit to tapping into that."
Below, EW got Weiss and Morello to reveal the wild story of how they came together to make Metal Lords, the surprising connection between The Muppets and heavy metal music, and so much more.
SCOTT PATRICK GREEN/NETFLIX Adrian Greensmith and Jaeden Martell in 'Metal Lords'.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This is the kind of movie that I wish existed when I was growing up. Where did you get the idea for Metal Lords?
D.B. WEISS: I think it's the kind of movie that maybe did exist when you were younger, just with less metal in it. [Laughs] The idea came very loosely from experiences that I had when I was the age of the characters in the movie, trying to play music, failing to play music, and the situations that came out of that in the suburb that I grew up in. It started to seem like maybe there was a fun, contained, heartwarming, grounded story in just a couple of kids trying to figure out how they might fit in with each other when they don't seem to fit in anywhere else.
Since this was based on your own experiences, does that mean you competed in a Battle of the Bands when you were younger?
WEISS: I would say pretty loosely based on my experiences. We did. There were numerous battles of the bands that we competed in and, I'm going to guess, not won.
TOM MORELLO: [Laughs.]
WEISS: I'm just thinking about the level of play and the level of showmanship involved, and if I'm going to be completely honest, we probably got one of those participation trophies, the kind they give out to you in some suburbs.
How did you two meet and decide to work together on this movie?
MORELLO: Dan and I are heavy metal dads at school. Our sons are friends and play in a band together actually. Dan was the guy with a heavy metal T-shirt on in the hallway, and I was the guy with the Judas Priest or Iron Maiden t-shirt, and we bonded over that. We're from the Northern suburbs of Chicago as well so there's always Cubs and Blackhawks talk and whatnot. So we've been friends for quite some time, and when Dan called me up one day and said, "I'm making a movie called Metal Lords, a coming-of-age film with suburban teens," I was like, "That's my life story." He asked me to be a part of it, and for me, it was pretty low-hanging fruit. I was very, very excited. Heavy metal music is the music that made me love music. It's the music that made me want to play music. I see myself in some of the protagonists in this film, kids who do not have power and do not have purpose and do not have meaning or connection, finding all of those things with music, heavy metal music in particular, as the conduit.
SCOTT PATRICK GREEN/NETFLIX
Were you guys more like Kevin or Hunter when you were younger?
WEISS: It's funny; I feel like I've probably alternately been various different Hunters and Kevins in my life, depending on circumstances. It's finding different sides of yourself. And I was definitely friends with a number of Hunters over the years and friends with a number of Kevins over the years so it's about drawing on the various different strategies you used at any given time to deal with whatever adversity's in front of you. And those guys are two different coping strategies, I guess you could call them, neither of which is necessarily ideal on its own, at least where they're at the beginning of the film. But hopefully, they find their way through, through the intercession of Emily [Isis Hainsworth] especially, to a better way of facing what they're facing in their lives.
MORELLO: I was a full-on Hunter. All Hunter, 100 percent.
WEISS: [Laughs] All Hunter, all the time?
MORELLO: It was a mission. And I just had to find people that were as committed to rock & roll as I was, which was hard to do. And with dreams that big, too. I remember my band had never played a show and I was sketching stages at Soldier Field, like where the Bears play. [Laughs] "This is what the stage setup is going to look like when we're playing in front of 80,000 people."
WEISS: It's maybe why your band worked out better than mine. Or at least, some people say.
MORELLO: My high school band did win the Battle of the Bands, by the way.
I'm not surprised at all.
MORELLO: Despite the fact we were the least musically adept, but we had the holy spirit of rock & roll.
When you two first got together to talk about this movie, how did that meeting go?
WEISS: Meeting might be a big word for it. It may have been drinking beer at The Rainbow, that may have been the meeting. [Laughs] I just knew that there were things that I could not bring to this on my own. And I knew that I happened to be drinking beer at The Rainbow with somebody who lived this music and who had this music in his bones in a way that I never could in a million years. So I sort of asked, begged, and pleaded Tom to be a part of it and to give his metal wisdom to the project as a whole and his musical understanding of what it means to be a kid playing music on the outside of the high school culture that he lives in, and all that stuff. I knew that he would be the perfect person to take this on. To this day, I feel very, very lucky that he said yes.
MORELLO: It was an easy sell. I've made 22 records, but this is the first time where I was asked to make a record that was — I've made records that are heavy metal and rap, and heavy metal and alternative, and heavy metal and EDM, and the theme song "Machinery of Torment," the idea was this is going to be a song that's heavy metal with more heavy metal.
SCOTT PATRICK GREEN/NETFLIX
Tom, what was it like for you not only getting to write "Machinery of Torment" but also getting to curate the soundtrack for the movie? Was it essentially like making your ultimate heavy metal playlist?
MORELLO: The soundtrack is spectacular. And my wife, Denise, is the music supervisor, and she's metal too. I mean, that's why I married her, in part. [Laughs] She has a depth and breadth and was suggesting songs that were even sometimes outside of my experience. But it was great to have family heavy metal playlist listening time while driving our kids. My oldest son is a big fan of BTS, so when we're trying to choose between which deep cut Judas Priest track and which Celtic Frost track to put in there, he's just like, "What's wrong with my parents?" [Laughs] Which is right! Metal should always be out for the outsider, whether it's generational, in one direction, or the other.
WEISS: I love that metal has become, "What's wrong with your parents?"
MORELLO: [Laughs] As opposed to, "What's wrong with you?"
WEISS: Isn't that just the best?
MORELLO: I think that's the sequel. Metal Lords 2 is when they have kids who are fans of K-pop groups...
You joke, but I would absolutely watch that. Are you two planning to work together on more projects after this movie?
WEISS: There's some things we've spoken about in more abstract terms and less abstract terms, but I would love to.
MORELLO: Yeah, Dan and I are good friends, and there's something about a Chicago person who loves metal — that's kind of my tribe. We have a lot of similar interests, and so I'd be happy to.
WEISS: We collaborate on frequent Dungeons & Dragons games together.
MORELLO: Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't feel like it's work at all. I mean, Dan works really, really hard at making his movies but having a collaborative process that has to do with metal or under that umbrella is nothing but a pleasure.
SCOTT PATRICK GREEN/NETFLIX
Tom, did you get to mentor the younger actors when it came to performing and playing music in the movie?
MORELLO: As a matter of fact, I did. I got to undo a good deal of the excellent professional mentoring that they received. [Laughs] They all learned to play the song "Machinery of Torment" on their instruments really precisely. Only one of the three actors had been a musician prior to the film. And all three of them, very credibly, pull off playing their instruments in a not just camera-ready way, but in a really in-person convincing way. And I told them to throw all of that out when it came time to perform it. They understood how to play the music.
But the key thing in the live performance was to understand what you've got to feel like when you love that music, and you're playing it. And that's an entirely different category. There was this kind of mood board I sent, a lot of outrageous all-caps messages during the days when they were filming it, like, "If you think you're rocking wildly enough, you're at 10 percent. If you're embarrassed at the grimacing on your face and believe it's too barbaric, you haven't begun to grimace yet." I sent a picture of the singer of Metallica making some outrageous bellowing, a picture of a snarling jaguar, and a picture of someone, a gentleman, who had just burst a beer bottle over his head and was in a barbarian rage.
WEISS: [Laughs] Somebody who looked impaired for undefined reasons.
MORELLO: And I said, "Let that be your only guide for how you are to behave during this scene." Notice that there's notes on this, and there's nothing precise. You just have to inhabit that sort of feeling.
WEISS: I remember you also sent Jaeden; there was a drum battle between … I think it was between somebody and Animal from The Muppets?
MORELLO: Yes! I said, "Just do what that guy does." Let me tell you, Animal understands.
WEISS: That guy gets it.
Scott Patrick Green / Netflix
Tom, have you ever had any major disasters happen while performing onstage?
MORELLO: Nothing but mishaps. Oh, sure. Sure. Horrific embarrassments and whatnot. I mean, I can't even remember my top 10 list. It's just cringe. I've tried to put them all in a dark drawer and lock them away. There was one time where I was playing Reading Festival in England, which is a large festival, like 60,000 people, and the show was being filmed for Europe, so it's a big deal. I had this special, fancy guitar move to redefine the instrument that was like pulling out the jack and doing this thing that everyone in the United States had gone crazy over and now the entire continent of Europe is going to marvel at my inspirational genius that I'm about to drop on them. [Laughs] The one thing that I didn't factor in was the plugs are different there, so something that works with the electricity here — and there's no soundcheck at Reading, you just roll out and play — so I unplug the guitar, and I'm going to tap it to the metal, and it's going to make this crazy computer noise, and everyone's going to realize how awesome it is. And it just goes [makes quiet pop sound] as the camera zooms in. I'm just standing there with an unplugged guitar. And then I sheepishly plug it back in, play a few Chuck Berry licks, and went back to the hotel and cried myself to sleep.
WEISS: [Laughs] I'm going to have to hunt for this now. I'm going to spend all day trying to [find video evidence].
MORELLO: It might be on there. I told our publicist to delete it from the internet.
Metal Lords is now streaming on Netflix.
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