In the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot standout “Heavy Metal Drummer,” Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy sings, “I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands / I used to go see on the landing in the summer / She fell in love with the drummer.” If you also miss those heavy metal drummers (because live music has shut down until next year, at the earliest) and you want to fall in love with one, check out the trailer for Sound of Metal, where Riz Ahmed plays a drummer in a two-piece metal band who’s losing his sense of hearing. “Your hearing is deteriorating rapidly,” a doctor tells Ruben, played by the Rogue One actor, who must learn to re-build his life at a remote community for the deaf.
Here’s more on Sound of Metal:
Riz Ahmed is a noise metal drummer. Shirtless and full of coiled intensity, he hammers out ferocious sets with his girlfriend and bandmate (Olivia Cooke). But with each show, a persistent ringing in his ears worsens until sound drops out altogether. For a deaf musician and his partner who’ve built their precarious existence doing what they know and love, what happens now? If he can’t recover his hearing, who will he become?
Sound of Metal, which also stars Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, and Mathieu Amalric, premieres on Amazon Prime Video on December 4. Also, the next time you go to a concert, please earplugs.