{"id":162786,"date":"2025-09-23T02:42:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T02:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/162786\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T02:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T02:42:12","slug":"how-into-the-void-is-bringing-heavy-metals-human-stories-to-the-mainstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/162786\/","title":{"rendered":"How Into The Void is bringing heavy metal\u2019s human stories to the mainstream"},"content":{"rendered":"

The history of heavy metal<\/a> is strewn with incredible music and against-all-odds triumphs, but the genre is also full of stories about very human struggle. It\u2019s these dark days that are the focus of a brand-new television series \u2013 Into The Void: Life, Death & Heavy Metal <\/a>\u2013 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<\/a> and the subliminal messaging lawsuit against Judas Priest<\/a> as well as more cult figures like punk\/metal pioneer Wendy O. Williams.<\/p>\n

Ahead of Into The Void\u2019s 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<\/a>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n

\"A\n<\/p>\n

How did the idea of doing a heavy metal docuseries come to you?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jason: \u201cEvan and I, we\u2019re pretty much lifelong metal fans. Our friendship started over our love for movies, metal and wrestling, something like 15 years ago. We\u2019re 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, \u2018If we could do another series outside of wrestling, we would love to do the world of heavy metal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got a broad array of subjects for this first series, from well-known bands like Judas Priest and Death<\/a> to underground figures like Wendy O. Williams and Kurt Struebing. How did you come up with that mix?<\/p>\n

Evan: \u201cWe didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds like representing heavy metal in a non-stereotypical way was hugely important, then.<\/p>\n

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Jason: \u201cI 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 \u2013 when we have some reenactments in the show \u2013 they have to send us pictures of the shirts everyone was wearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evan: \u201cWhen 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\u2019s gonna know that that\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were you able to bring any lessons from Dark Side Of The Ring or other series to this one?<\/p>\n

Jason: \u201cWhen 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\u2019m hoping this season gives us that street cred and that we\u2019ll 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<\/a>\u2019s story, we got to spend time with Rita Haney, Dimebag\u2019s 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\u2019t seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Into The Void | Official Trailer | Hulu – YouTube
\n\"Into<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes when you do interviews, you anticipate the story to go one way but it actually goes another. Were there any moments like that?<\/p>\n

Evan: \u201cThe Sharon Osbourne interview from the Randy Rhoads episode. Randy was such an amazing person \u2013 and such a gifted, visionary genius \u2013 but to tell the story around his very traumatic and tragic passing, I wasn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was that the most uncomfortable of the interviews?<\/p>\n

Evan: \u201cI 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<\/a>. 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\u2019s the most emotional episode, because it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Judas\n<\/p>\n

Judas Priest in court in 1990. A suit alleging that the band hid pro-suicide messages in their music is the subject of one Into The Void episode. (Image credit: Bettmann via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s from 40 or so ago?<\/p>\n

Evan: \u201cWe 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s end by talking about a potential series two. If you got to do more episodes, who\u2019d be on the slate and what stories would you most want to tell?<\/p>\n

Evan: \u201cUnfortunately, I\u2019d like to keep that close to my chest. I want to make sure that it\u2019s us reaching out to them and letting that conversation happen organically. Also, I don\u2019t 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\u2019t been as told as some of the ones we\u2019ve covered this season, even.\u201d<\/p>\n

Into The Void is available in the US via Hulu. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The history of heavy metal is strewn with incredible music and against-all-odds triumphs, but the genre is also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-162786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}