HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT
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Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a 1986 shot-on-video[1][2] documentary short produced by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn. The film features interviews with several small groups of young heavy metal fans gathered for a tailgate party in the parking lot outside the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland on May 31, 1986, as they prepare for a Judas Priest/Dokken concert being held there later that evening.
The music video for the 2000 song “Flavor of the Weak” by American Hi-Fi is a conscious homage to Heavy Metal Parking Lot, featuring the band members and others dressed as specific people from the documentary, and spouting variations on some of the same dialogue.[7]
The music video for the 2005 song “Just Want You to Know” by the Backstreet Boys also references Heavy Metal Parking Lot.[9]
The Ska Punk band Less Than Jake included scenes from the movie in the music video for their song “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads”.
The season two episode of the television show Friday Night Lights titled “Humble Pie”, Jean gives a mixtape to Landry that she labeled Heavy Metal Parking Lot; Jean is previously described as a fan of cult movies and music.
The 2019 Steel Panther album Heavy Metal Rules is named after the “philosophy” of the “Zebra-man”[10]
Dialogue from the film is sampled several times on The Avalanches’ 2016 album Wildflower.
Clips from the film were shown during the 2022 induction of Judas Priest into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“If I would have had known what I know now, I never would’ve shut the camera off. I would’ve filmed the entire ’80s.”
Jeff Krulik
When aspiring filmmakers Jeff Krulik (UMD ’83) and John Heyn descended upon the Capital Centre parking lot on May 31, 1986, they had little more in mind than to document a fan scene at full peak. The result was Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a 16-minute film featuring local heavy metal fans expressing their enthusiasm for Judas Priest before the band performed in concert later that night.
The film’s subsequent 30-year journey into popular culture – which started from bootleg copies passed among fans and video collectors, and grew into multi-generation dubs on an underground tape-trading network – has earned it an international fan base all its own. Filmmakers, musicians, actors, artists, music fans and scholars have embraced it as both an iconic representation of a unique subculture and a valuable primary source worthy of anthropological study.
The documentary, which lacks a narrative, also seems to capture something at once obvious and elusive, a collective portrait clear in its depiction but somehow impossible to define. The question, “What is Heavy Metal Parking Lot?” remains unanswerable, and that may be precisely why its legacy endures. This exhibit reveals what happened that day in Landover, MD, and in the 30 years that followed.
Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States.[2] With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal bands developed a thick, monumental sound characterized by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness.
1968, three of the genre’s most famous pioneers – British bands Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple – were founded.[3] Though they came to attract wide audiences, they were often derided by critics. Several American bands modified heavy metal into more accessible forms during the 1970s: the raw, sleazy sound and shock rock of Alice Cooper and Kiss; the blues-rooted rock of Aerosmith; and the flashy guitar leads and party rock of Van Halen.[4] During the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre’s evolution by discarding much of its blues influence,[5][6] while Motörhead introduced a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Beginning in the late 1970s, bands in the new wave of British heavy metal such as Iron Maiden and Saxon followed in a similar vein. By the end of the decade, heavy metal fans became known as “metalheads” or “headbangers“. The lyrics of some metal genres became associated with aggression and machismo,[7] an issue that has at times led to accusations of misogyny.
During the 1980s, glam metal became popular with groups such as Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe and Poison. Meanwhile, however, underground scenes produced an array of more aggressive styles: thrash metal broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, while other extreme subgenres such as death metal and black metal became – and remain – subcultural phenomena. Since the mid-1990s, popular styles have expanded the definition of the genre. These include groove metal and nu metal, the latter of which often incorporates elements of grunge and hip-hop
