HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING ‘METAL EVOLUTION’ ON VH1?

My heavy metal DVD shelf was once pretty bare, displaying only The Decline Of Western Civilization and a load of one-view concert films. But just since 2005, it’s been sagging under the weight of classy, addictively watchable feature-length documentaries like Heavy Metal In Baghdad, Get Thrashed, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and the Iron Maiden and Rush movies. The latter four come courtesy of industrious heavy metal anthropologists Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, both responsible for the launch of metal’s overdue efforts to canonize itself and shout down mainstream media’s 40-year campaign to paint metal as dumb, violent ape music. Pssht. Everybody knows it’s awesome, fun ape music.

Cough anyway Dunn and McFadyen are back with an 11-part mini-series airing Saturdays on VH1 Classic titled Metal Evolution. Think about it for a sec: That’s a total running time of about 440 minutes. If you’re not bonered about that, then … gosh, get your boner checked, okay? To date, three episodes have aired, each detailing the roots of metal in blues, jazz, and classical music; Saturday’s episode (above) traveled to England to gab with/about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (who, according to Dunn, declined to be interviewed due to an aversion to being associated with metal), and concluded with Judass Priest circa Sad Wings Of Destiny. Spoiler: Bruce Dickinson calls Eric Clapton “tame” compared to Ritchie Blackmore. SWISH! Episode schedule after the jump:

Nov 11: Pre Metal
Nov 19: Early Metal US
Dec 3: Early Metal UK
Dec 10: New Wave Of British Heavy Metal
Dec 17: Glam
Dec 31: Thrash
Jan 7: Grunge
Jan 14: Nu Metal
Jan 21: Shock Rock
Jan 28: Power Metal
Feb 4: Progressive Metal

-ADF

Metal Evolution airs Saturdays at 8 on VH1 Classic right before Elephant Trunk and his peanut gallery on That Metal Show.