The history of heavy metal is strewn with incredible music and against-all-odds triumphs, but the genre is also full of stories about very human struggle. It’s these dark days that are the focus of a brand-new television series – Into The Void: Life, Death & Heavy Metal – co-created by Dark Side Of The Ring producers Jason Eisener and Evan Husney. The eight-episode documentary show hits US screens today (September 22), with its instalments focussing on moments as well-known as the death of Randy Rhoads and the subliminal messaging lawsuit against Judas Priest as well as more cult figures like punk/metal pioneer Wendy O. Williams.
Ahead of Into The Void’s premiere, we sat down with Jason and Evan. The pair quickly revealed how deep their love for metal runs and the borderline-obsessive level of passion they brought to their show. From talking to Sharon Osbourne mere days before Ozzy’s retirement gig to digging up hour after hour of news footage, this is how they put together a show that they hope will make the mainstream appreciate the real-life costs which sometimes come with playing noisy music.
How did the idea of doing a heavy metal docuseries come to you?
Jason: “Evan and I, we’re pretty much lifelong metal fans. Our friendship started over our love for movies, metal and wrestling, something like 15 years ago. We’re very interested in telling stories from cultures that have been maligned or misunderstood, wrestling being one of them. We wanted to tell the human side of these stories. So, for years, Evan and I have dreamed of, like, ‘If we could do another series outside of wrestling, we would love to do the world of heavy metal.’”
You’ve got a broad array of subjects for this first series, from well-known bands like Judas Priest and Death to underground figures like Wendy O. Williams and Kurt Struebing. How did you come up with that mix?
Evan: “We didn’t want to make this a career-based documentary series where we did the bio of a particular artist. We really wanted to distil it down into the most humanistic stories within that. Metal is the setting, but what are the human stories that bubble to the surface? It was story-first: finding stories about loss, grief, perseverance, resilience and those larger themes that audiences can connect to.”
It sounds like representing heavy metal in a non-stereotypical way was hugely important, then.
Jason: “I wish you could hear the passionate rally calls that Evan has done on conference calls, ha ha! He pushed so hard for that authenticity, even down to – when we have some reenactments in the show – they have to send us pictures of the shirts everyone was wearing.”
Evan: “When we were shooting the Judas Priest episode, it was very important to me that, when they showed the Stained Class album on the turntable, it had to have the CBS logo on it. The reissue vinyl [without that logo], everyone’s gonna know that that’s a reissue someone from the art department just went out and bought. We got the actual first pressing that people had at that time period.”
Were you able to bring any lessons from Dark Side Of The Ring or other series to this one?
Jason: “When we did Dark Side Of The Ring, we learned that we had to gain some street cred in order to gain access and tell the stories we wanted to tell. That takes time. I’m hoping this season gives us that street cred and that we’ll be able to make more seasons and get access to other stories. Getting people to open up to us in the way that they do, that takes time, and we have to spend time with the subjects. With Dimebag Darrell’s story, we got to spend time with Rita Haney, Dimebag’s partner. We spent this awesome weekend at her house, and I feel like she opened up in a way in the episode that you haven’t seen before.”
Sometimes when you do interviews, you anticipate the story to go one way but it actually goes another. Were there any moments like that?
Evan: “The Sharon Osbourne interview from the Randy Rhoads episode. Randy was such an amazing person – and such a gifted, visionary genius – but to tell the story around his very traumatic and tragic passing, I wasn’t quite sure what she was going to get into as far as that interview. When she was opening up to us and walking us through the beat-by-beat of that awful day in 1982, as you can see, it was very emotional for her. I was not expecting that: how open and honest she was about the details.”
Was that the most uncomfortable of the interviews?
Evan: “I was concerned for her, and we made sure that she wanted to keep going, but it was very important to her that she got the story out. We filmed the interview a handful of days before Back To The Beginning. We filmed it in Birmingham, and the fact that she took time away while putting that show together is just amazing. But there are others, too, especially the Death episode. For me, that’s the most emotional episode, because it’s the most relatable. A lot of people have family members or loved ones that have dealt with the loss of someone going through an illness like that. Hearing the story of the family and everything they put into fighting to save Chuck [Schuldiner, singer/guitarist], and everything they did without health insurance, made the most impact on me.”
I was struck by the amount of archive footage you found for these episodes. Can you talk about the process of digging up that level of news coverage, especially when it’s from 40 or so ago?
Evan: “We have to shout out our archive team working on this show. They did such an incredible job, going through and finding all the footage, because it was new to me as well! In the Judas Priest episode, there’s some amazing news footage of the Satanic Panic, people getting upset about metal and stuff, and they were able to unearth it. I assume they go directly to those news stations and have them basically unearth a lot of this footage. That was really exciting to me.”
Let’s end by talking about a potential series two. If you got to do more episodes, who’d be on the slate and what stories would you most want to tell?
Evan: “Unfortunately, I’d like to keep that close to my chest. I want to make sure that it’s us reaching out to them and letting that conversation happen organically. Also, I don’t want anyone else to scoop us! Trust me, the episodes we want to do are ones that people would love to see. Some of them haven’t been as told as some of the ones we’ve covered this season, even.”
Into The Void is available in the US via Hulu.
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