Paul Di’Anno’s story was never going to make for a neat rock documentary. As Iron Maiden’s original frontman, he helped give the band its early street-level snarl, bringing a punkier, rougher energy to those first two albums before Bruce Dickinson helped turn Maiden into global metal giants.

Directed by Wes Orshoski, Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer understands that legacy, but it is far more interested in the damaged, complicated man left behind by it. The film works best when it sits with that contradiction. Di’Anno is presented as both a vital part of heavy metal history and someone who often seemed unable to escape the wreckage of his own choices. There is admiration here, but not blind worship. The documentary traces the early triumphs, the mythology, the health problems, the chaos and the lifelong burden of being forever defined by the band he left decades earlier.

What makes it hit harder is the sense of a life spent circling one extraordinary moment. For Maiden fans, there is obvious fascination in revisiting the early days and Di’Anno’s importance to the band’s sound. For everyone else, the film becomes something more melancholy, a portrait of talent, ego, regret and survival.

It is not always an easy watch, and it does not pretend that its subject was simply misunderstood. That honesty gives the documentary weight. Di’Anno comes across as charismatic, difficult, funny, bruised and frustratingly human. As a music documentary, it may not fully escape the familiar shape of a rock rise-and-fall story, but as a farewell to one of metal’s great lost voices, it has real emotional power.