There’s no need to re-cap the 32 year history of Anvil here. After all, Sacha Gervasi’s movie about the Canadian metallers, Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, made it into “the number one rock documentary is UK box office history”, according drummer Robb Reiner. As a result Reiner and singer / guitarist Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow became international symbols of a never-say-die tenacity triumphing in the face of the fickle music industry, and have seen their initially self-released thirteenth album (er, This Is Thirteen) become the subject of a major label bidding war. As 2009 draws to close the drummer tells Alison B that the fourteenth is already well on the way, and even infamous ‘lost’ track Thumb Hang is at last being aired.
So Anvil is coming back to London where, in the sense that you first met Sacha here in 1981, the movie phenomenon really started. Do you have any theories as to why Anvil has always struck such a chord with metal fans here?
I just think people in Europe understand real metal and they stay true to it. If they become your fan they don’t go away; they’re not transitory, they stay dedicated. I think that’s pretty well established. The movie changed our world completely, the story needed to be told. And now it has been people are engaging in it so intensely. It makes me very happy.
It did need to be told. It’s the story that hundreds of bands will tell, but that Hollywood has never touched before.
You got it, but not all bands have been doing it for 32 years. Those bands’ music never made a difference, Anvil’s did. That’s why the movie got made, the music actually meant something. Management is what derailed us from getting where we wanted to get to years ago but it’s happening now and that’s what’s so beautiful about it – it’s never too late.
You can say that now, but at the start of filming you don’t appear to have much faith that the industry could give you a break at this stage of the game. Could you really have imagined success on this scale even a year ago?
A year ago, yeah. Three years ago, who knows? Sacha told me while we were making the movie to enjoy this, and that everything will ‘arrive’ off of this. That’s basically what he said to me and so far it’s really happening! My faith in the industry is never going to change, the industry is in a downward spiral; there are no record companies, you have downloading on the internet, you have all this new stuff and we have a movie. Why do we need a record company promoting our band when we have a movie?!
This Is Thirteen started out as your first release without label backing, do we take it that you’re attitude now is that you can take or leave a record deal?
This Is Thirteen has now been picked up by labels, Sony in Japan, Sony I believe in the UK, and Universal have put it out in the US. But we’ve kept control of it, which is unique. We haven’t had to sell our souls out. With our new album Juggernaut Of Justice we don’t know what we’re going to do as far as the industry is concerned. There’s blood in the water right now and the sharks are swimming around.
So how is the next album progressing?
Well, it’s completely written, it’s not finished but it’s up to the stage of recording. Our manager right now also manages Mastodon and Slayer and he’s got all kinds of people in line to produce the album, so we’ll hopefully record it by the end of this year and it’ll be out next year. And Thumb Hang has been recorded. We initially recorded it for the movie soundtrack but that is not going to come to pass now for other business reasons so it’s ended up as a bonus track on the This Is Thirteen reissue - it will see the light of day!
Anvil play Koko with Saxon on 8 November.
