Anvil: The Story of Anvil

I’ve been waiting for this movie to arrive at the library, and it finally came in. We watched it the other night and laughed, and cried, and cheered and made sad faces along with Anvil’s journey. Here’s a review.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Port O’ Call: Anvil: The Story of Anvil, a 2008 documentary about Canadian metal band Anvil and their struggle to re-create their past success.

Mateys: Directed by Sasha Gervasi (The Terminal – I loved this movie) and starring Anvil.

Premise: childhood friends Steve “Lips” Kudrow and Robb Reiner, formed Anvil, a Canadian thrash metal act which exploded onto the early 80s metal scene when metal was at the height of awesome. Instant fame and notoriety awaited them, and they played sold-out festivals alongside acts like Bon Jovi, Scorpians and Whitesnake.

While their contemporaries went on to sell millions of records, Anvil took a different path, straight into obscurity. No one knows why, but after their hit album Metal on Metal, everyone – the press, the promoters, the fans – just forgot about Anvil.

But Lips and Robb didn’t forget. They went back to Canada, got wives, got jobs, and kept writing, kept recording albums, kept playing hardout gigs at empty clubs and waiting and hoping for the day the world would remember Anvil.

30 years on, Lips delivers lunches to high schools, and Robb works construction. With their new Swedish manager they found on the internet, they embark on a disaster-ridden and often hilarious European tour, culminating in a highly-publicised Transylvanian festival that sold only 150 tickets.

Will Anvil be able to reclaim their past glory without destroying their friendship. Well, you will have to watch to find out.

Why it’s Krieg: First, Anvil are a really good band – you can’t help but like them. Their lyrics are cheesy and full of awesome, and they can seriously play – it’s a classic thrash sound that just makes you bang your head. Lips makes use of some epic costumes (mainly a bondage harness and big, permed hair) and stage acting, including the infamous dildo – guitar solo.

In his incredibly long-winded bonus interview, Lars Ulrich points out that most bands at the time had a stage act – like Kiss – but the music wasn’t there. Or they had the music – like Iron Maiden – but not the rockstar stories. But Anvil had both – they had everything.

Plus, they’re just plain, ordinary, likeable guys. Lips is the dreamer – the one with the big ideas. You can see, at times, a manic personality – in one sentence he’ll claim he doesn’t care how famous he is or how much recognition he gets as long as he’s playing music with his best mate, but on the other hand he’s mortgaging his house, hounding record execs and old musician buddies for the chance to “make it”. Rob is a bit quieter, a bit of an artist and a grounding force to keep Lip’s ambition in check. When you see them together, you know they’re going to die within hours of each other and be buried in the same flying V-shaped coffin.

Second, we see a lot of docos about bands where everything goes right – sure, their gear might get lost or their groupie might give the ghonorrhea, but generally, you see docos of bands who’ve made it. It was fascinating (and heartbreaking) to see these guys remortgage their houses to play gigs in Europe and Japan, and to worry about things like “how many people show up?”

Also, if you go to the Anvil website, you’ll see the doco has given them the fuel to unleash a second coming, and after watching the DVD, you just want to give them a big hug and say “you did it!” They’ve been touring with ACDC, playing huge festivals in Europe and embarking on decent-sized tours. I think they’ve made their dreams come true.

After the ride these guys take you though, and you’re just sitting on the couch waiting for their record company to get back to them, or to see the size of the crowd at their final show in Japan, you are a mess of “c’mon guys!”

Why it’s Emo: It’s really sad to see these guys pour their heart and soul into this music, only to be constantly met with setbacks and issues. When you watch this you feel as though you’re seeing a part of someone’s life you’re not meant to see.

If you thought “Some Kind of Monster” was ridiculous, you’re not going to like this, because it’s essentially the same format – a reality TV show about a band and their feelings. I think it’s better than Some Kind of Monster only because you can identify with their “never quite made it” a lot more than, say, Lars’ art collection and James’ “I have 30 million dollars, millions of fans worldwide, and the dream career, but dammit, I’m angry”.

Although, I imagine watching Lars make hand gestures while he stares in the corner trying to construct an argument must get awful frustrating.

You won’t learn any lessons about successfully promoting a band. I think one of the reasons (not covered by Lars in his exhaustive interview with lots of hand gestures) Anvil never “made it”, was because they’ve been promoting their music in the same way since they were fifteen, and if it worked in the 1980s, then dammit, it would work again. I think their contemporaries got older, got smarter, and adopted new and better promotion methods once they had more fans. And Anvil got left in the dust.

When you watch Anvil, you follow the story of two fifteen year old boys who never grew up. It’s both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Quote: Anvil’s Swedish manager: “It’s H like Hotel. You understand? H like Hotel, A like… Ass, S like Sodom, S like Sodom… “

Rating: I give this three and a half horns \m/ \m/ \m/ \n It’s great to see music documentaries about bands who didn’t “make it”.