Producers Howie Abrams, Seth Abrams, and Jammi York initially planned to write a book about the healing power of hardcore music. Genres like punk and heavy metal, and bands like Social Distortion, the Ramones, Bad Religion, and H2O. They wanted to dive deep into how hardcore helps those with chronic conditions, mental health issues, or cancer.
But the book idea didn’t quite capture the entire vision they were working toward.
“We really didn’t feel that a book could do this idea justice,” Howie Abrams, who was also the director, told NY1‘s Roger Clark. “So we decided, three non-filmmakers, to make a movie about people who suffer from anything and everything—health, mental health, illness, disability—and have used aggressive music that we grew up being told wasn’t music at all to heal, to be motivated.”
The film is called Heavy Healing, and features interviews with many crucial figures in the hardcore scene. Members of the bands Murphy’s Law, Agnostic Front, Killswitch Engage, Bowling for Soup, Leeway, and H2O contributed to the film. Former D Generation vocalist Jesse Malin also contributed, almost three years after suffering a spinal stroke that caused paralysis in his legs.