ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL

THE WORKS 

RELEASED 20 February 2009

I’ve seen two great rockumentaries. One is ‘Spinal Tap’, which is a comedy featuring actors (of course), but it encapsulates the excesses of the rock world just as well as any real documentary ever could. The other great rockumentary is the real-life story of Metallica’s struggle to make their ‘St. Anger’ album during 2001-2003, called ‘Metallica: Some Kind of Monster’. The band often come across more ‘Tap’ than the ‘Tap’ do! It’s all slamming doors, egos, a tour shrink, and a bunch of guys who’ve forgotten why they’re together. Now there’s a new rockumentary which I would place just below these two, about a band who had their moment in the sun back in the early eighties and have been trying to recapture that level of fame ever since.

Friends since the age of fourteen, frontman Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, released ‘Metal on Metal’ in 1982, and everyone from Metallica to Lemmy and Slash were influenced by it. And everyone interviewed in this rockumentary ask the same thing - whatever happened to those guys?

Now into their 50’s, with families and factory jobs to support, Steve and Robb are still taking Anvil out on tour whenever possible. The crowds are small, and a European tour is both hilarious and farcical at times, but the two best friends still believe that their day will come again, and there’s a new record contract out there for them somewhere.

Heart-wrenching would be the word for ‘Anvil! The Story of Anvil’. This is the real-life tale of two guys following their dream, even though everyone around them can see the dream died a long time ago. They just won’t give up, and it’s both tragic yet uplifting to see them keep going no matter what. And even though the promise of a Japanese tour and a new album are the things Anvil are aiming for, what Steve and Robb really do it for is the music. They just love playing metal, and they can’t get it out of their system. It doesn’t really matter how many people they play to, they’re just happy being on stage.

Half the time you’re chuckling at the foolishness of it all, and the rest of the time you’re willing them to make it, twenty-five years too late! Director Sacha Gervasi obviously loves the band and has filmed them at their most optimistic and darkest moments. Whatever the future holds for Anvil, the success of this rockumentary is a testament to them that can never be taken away.

THREE OUT OF FIVE