What the story lacks in plot, it is carried by feel-good messages. The ending of [Metal Lords] makes me give out the biggest toothy grin. Weird kids exist and that’s okay.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 4, 2023

Metal Lords plays its coming-of-age riff fast and loose.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 8, 2022

Metal Lords plays out like a generic offspring born from a tryst between School of Rock, The Spectacular Now and every high-school movie featuring two childhood friends, a strange girl and a Battle of the Bands contest.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 20, 2022

'Metal Lords' is a fun, endearing look at growing up.

Full Review | Original Score: 3 stars | Jun 19, 2022

As big-hearted and good-natured as "Metal Lords" is, it can't help but feel like an inferior version of a story we've seen many times before.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 10, 2022

The films that please me the most are not simply the best-developed, or written, or directed ones. I am at my happiest when a film firmly decides what sort of movie it wants to be, and then excels at being that kind of movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 9, 2022

Maybe Metal Lords is the proof of what the final season of GOT made us all suspect: Unless they have someone else's writing to adapt, then Weiss and Shapiro can't be trusted to come up with anything interesting by themselves.

Full Review | May 3, 2022

Metal Lords works best when it squeezes all the comic juice from a genre that is equally loved and maligned, its Satanic imagery, homoeroticism, and masculine bravado, heavy metal is rife for comic possibilities.

Full Review | Apr 25, 2022

A hodgepodge of familiar hallmarks of this genre mixed with equally recognizable metal music needle drops and all told without a hint of creativity or vision.

Full Review | Apr 24, 2022

For a movie focused on a genre all about breaking the rules, Metal Lords tends to stick to the safe formula of the movies that came before it. That doesnt make it bad by any means, but it could have been even better.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 22, 2022

The slight film has charm.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Apr 22, 2022

What Metal Lords understands so well about the music is just how transformative it can be for those who get into it.

Full Review | Apr 19, 2022

Mostly a straightforward garage band teen movie reminiscent of "Linda Linda Linda' (2005). Plays like a passion project with a strong nostalgia factor.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 16, 2022

Captures the uncertainty of youth with the soul of Sing Street and the rage of a Rage Against the Machine guitar solo.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 15, 2022

Its charming at times and always appropriately heavy metal-worshiping but its more clunky than head-banging.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 15, 2022

Not only is there zero innovation in the template gaps here, but the fundamentals are all absent too. The film wants to make you laugh and to feel for these kids, their connection, and their struggle. It doesn’t succeed in any of these goals.

Full Review | Apr 13, 2022

It's a movie with about as much hard-hitting realism as School of Rock, but there is a sense of honest humanity to these characters that emerges in a way that often doesn't happen in coming-of-age movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 12, 2022

Play your favorite Rage Against the Machine album instead.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 11, 2022

Metal Lords attempts to subvert expectations and be a true ode to metal. To that end, the film is an endearing love letter to young metal fans.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 10, 2022

It’s a slight film, and an almost self-consciously low-key follow-up to the massive Game of Thrones, but Weiss has the personal experience to make its humbler ambitions work.

Full Review | Apr 9, 2022