Metal Lords Writer D.B. Weiss Talks Inspirations and Evolutions

The popularity of metal means it can be easy to inject references to specific musical acts into a project to win favor with audiences, but for writer D.B. Weiss, the upcoming Netflix film Metal Lords allowed him the opportunity to craft a love letter to his favorite bands, while also delivering a coming-of-age story about friends coming together over that shared love. While it would be hard for any metal fan to select their favorite bands, ComicBook.com recently pressed Weiss to select a dream lineup for a live show that would cater to all of his interests. Metal Lords debuts on Netflix on April 8th.

"You'd have to want to see Metallica at their peak. Well, there is really no peak. I saw Metallica right before the pandemic and there was as much power there as there was when I saw them in the '80s," Weiss shared. "Metallica, at any point, I think needs to be up there, and I think that you need to have Pantera. When they were at their peak, has to be up there, because that's a level of intensity there. Honestly, seeing what the guys in Mastodon do, and to this day, seeing what the guys in Anthrax do to this day, it would be ... I guess it depends. Are we talking like a three-day festival? We could spend a lot of time on this one."

In Metal Lords, "Two kids start a metal band in a high school where exactly two kids care about metal. They can't find a bassist, but there is this one girl who plays the cello. They need to work together if they're going to win the Battle of the Bands."

The project was initially being developed a decade ago, though Weiss' involvement in HBO's Game of Thrones meant having to put Metal Lords on the back burner. Despite how much time passed, the project maintained its core components, though earned some unexpected tweaks.

"At its core, it's got the same shape and the same heart to it, but definitely, in the intervening years, it had to change to catch up to the world that kids live in now, the world that we all live in now, which is different, drastically different from the world we were in even 10 years ago," the writer confirmed. "I tried not to let that change it too much, but I also felt like you can't ignore it, because otherwise, it's not going to make any sense." 

He continued, "I also think, in some ways, Hunter in the film is supposed to be the only metal kid at his school. I believe that now. When I first wrote the first draft of the school, that was a little bit of a buy. You had to just believe that a kid of whom there would be, like, 20 was the only one, and you just had to roll with it. And now it's a much easier thing to roll with, because I see him walking down the hall, dressed like that, and I'm like, 'Yep.' When I see the high school my kid's going into, there is not one kid in the halls of that high school who dresses like this kid."

Metal Lords premieres on Netflix on April 8th.

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