Documentary Lone Survivor – Paul Speckmann and the story of Master soliciting funds

paul_speckmann-lone_survivor

Way back in the early 1980s, a band in the Chicago area began making the transition from speed metal to a proto-death metal style. It transitioned through punk and oddly retained a lot of elements of 1960s rock, but was part of the formative path toward death metal along with Bathory, Slayer, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, Sepultura and Sodom before Death or Morbid Angel had ever recorded.

Three decades after that rocky start, two metal journalists are attempting to record the life and times of Paul Speckmann with a documentary entitled Lone Survivor – Paul Speckmann and the story of Master. The filmmakers bill the film as not just a Speckmann history, but “the story of anyone who has chased a dream and endured the victories and defeats that come with the journey.”

Filmmakers Jeff Tandy and Will Wulff are tackling this project from a zero-budget start. Wulff is a UC Irvine film graduate who attracted the attention of Paul Speckmann with a graduate project short film. Tandy is a 20-year music veteran and freelance metal journalist with extensive experience in the death metal field.

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4 thoughts on “Documentary Lone Survivor – Paul Speckmann and the story of Master soliciting funds”

  1. Billy Bob says:

    This guy is a one man legend!
    You know who else is a legend? Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth.
    These two guys are metal icons and should be featured on this site as examples of hard work, persistance and courage to carry the metal flag for their respective genres.

  2. ^ says:

    The previous post was brought to you by Century Media Records LLC

    1. Lord Mosher says:

      Iced Earth’s first three records are the perfect example of what power metal originally was: a 50-50 hybrid of speed metal technique blended with NWOBHM narrative. The downside though is that in this fusion, both subgenres compromised what made them distinct; the percussive feral intensity of speed metal and the romantic worldview of heavy metal got toned down into a weaker version of its parent subgenres. Like watching natural landscapes on tv rather than being there yourself.
      .
      Then Iced Earth became just a regular heavy metal band before taking a vocal centric rock-opera direction. It’s still fun to listen to I think.

  3. Iced Earth is like 20 albums that contain 2 albums worth of good songs. Funny you mention them since Master (Abomination, DeathStrike, etc.) is the same way. Each album has three good songs and the rest is just a sloppy mess of what sounds like the same song six times. The reason Paul Speckmann isn’t as famous as Morbid Angel is that he is personally disorganized to an extreme degree. He just kind of signed with whoever, sent the album in whenever, toured with whoever in the band, named the band whatever, you get the point. He should do a 2LP live like Motorhead did and put all his good songs on it, then everyone can buy that instead.

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