by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… a fever dream played at max volume.
Aging gracefully as a musician is a difficult task; especially when you operate at such extremity that not only is the word ‘graceful’ well outside of their vocabulary, the entire ‘g’ section must be missing from their dictionary. It’s one thing to look at news of Rage Against the Machine disbanding (again) because their bodies weren’t able to keep up with their usual stage performances; it’s quite another for a band to go through the same worries when their performances involve literal orgies and body suspension from metal hooks.
Everybody Dies, a documentary looking at the on-stage and off-stage antics of smut rock pioneers Society 1 (directed by front man Matt Zane), spends most of its time swinging back and forth across its own timeline like Zane himself during one of his many death-defying suspension acts. It covers the astoundingly fleshy past of the band, the excessive amounts of sex that accompanied their live shows, and Zane’s history of working in the adult film industry. And then it will zip back to 2023, where the band are dealing with rather mundane issues, like driving their tour bus on an icy road, or more standard-issue on-stage injuries to the knees because of a wobbly ego box.
The documentary is a fascinating example of a legacy act trying to continue with what they do best, albeit at a slightly muted volume compared to their heyday. And the film definitely makes it a point of showing how large their legacy is, with faces like Dave Navarro, Kid Rock, and even Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray (on the cusp of transitioning from nu-metal to music you could play at Thanksgiving) supporting their reputation as the outsiders everyone fucked with. Sometimes literally, given Zane’s Backstage Sluts video series, to the point where the first 30 minutes alone contains all the flesh – in flesh, on flesh, around flesh, through flesh, between flesh; it’s a lot to witness.
There’s a larger conversation here regarding pornogrind-tier sexual excess as it pertains to rock music, which would inevitably involve the impact of acts like Motley Crue. It’s hard to look at this much hardcore and not wonder about the bigger implications of such things. But as is typically the case with adversarial provocateurs (or shit-stirrers, to use a less poncy term), bringing such things up can feel like playing into their hands. Zane is quite matter-of-fact about all of it, from the on-stage pornography to physical exertion, and for a music doco, he’s far more interested in the performance than the production – don’t expect any major details about what goes into the music itself.
Zane looks at it all through a lens that, especially nowadays, can feel rather tired: ‘cancel culture’. Except that Zane has more of a leg to stand on (or possibly hobble on, depending on how the equipment behaves on a given night) than most. Where that conversation in the mainstream usually involves some reiteration of “how dare you not be my captive audience”, Zane is open and frank about not just the (entirely unsurprising) backlash that he’s received from all sides for his stage persona, but also the thralls of loyal fans who willingly engage with all this excess and find something cool or sexy or just metal about it. You pay the ticket, you know the ride you’re in for.
Amidst the hallucinatory footage that is cobbled together (where the inconsistent censorship becomes so pointless that it’s kind of hilarious), Zane presents metal music as something inherently boundary-pushing, taking inspiration from legendary figures like Jimi Hendrix and David Lee Roth, as well as the infamous GG Allin. Well outside of the norm, yet absolutely indebted to the classics; much like the film’s timeline and his own body, Zane shows himself regularly swinging back and forth on the edgelord’s tightrope: not giving a fuck and being the uncompromising figure he is at heart, yet still salty about what the haters have to say.
Everybody Dies is a fever dream played at max volume. It is wholly unapologetic about what is shown and what is done within the frame, both in the present and in recollection, and while its full-force display of obscenity is quite overwhelming, there’s also a sly sense of humour to it when contrasted with how geriatric the band’s concerns become in more recent times. It is quite exhilarating as a showing of the metal ethos, of creating noise to channel one’s aggression, and whether you’re familiar with The Lord or not, it is utterly fascinating as a snapshot of shit that actually happened.
