“I can’t envision myself being a millionaire,” Anvil frontman/guitarist Steve Ludlow, a k a Lips, told the New York Times a few short weeks ago. “but I can envision myself going to a gig every night and making enough money to make ends meet. I want to be the biggest bar band in the world and work endlessly.”
That’s a pretty great summary of the underdog life of the Canadian metal band Anvil and their uphill slog of a story as told in the Sacha Gervasi directed documentary, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” (cheekily titled on purpose). We saw the keenly self-aware yet condescension-free documentary this weekend over at BAM’s Sundance Institute in Brooklyn and while we didn’t want to do a full-blown review quite yet, we just wanted to note just how amazing it was.
The influential yet overlooked and underachieving rockers were once one of the key bands in the early ’80s metal scene and early pioneers of the lightning fast sound that became known as thrash metal, but due to a confluence of circumstances – incompetent managers, inept record labels for just two examples – the band were never able to capitalize on their sound the same way bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer did (representatives from all those bands, plus Motorhead’s Lemmy and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash all adamantly sing the bands praises in the doc).
Alternatively, hilarious, pathetic and moving, ‘Anvil’ goes from a doofusy, real-life “This Is Spinal Tap” set-up (you think they’re morons who should’ve given up the ghost a long time ago) to an incredibly poignant and very human story of friendship, brotherhood, cockroach-like tenacity and resilience in the face of the harshest of obstacles (you want them to succeed in every way imaginable). No joke, the inspiring tale provoked an emotional standing ovation after the screening where Gervasi (who wrote the Spielberg film, “The Terminal”) and the Anvil hosers were onhand for a Q&A (more on that in another post). The guileless rockers (now in their 50s!) also rocked out for an amazing 45 minute concert afterwards (which totally ruled). You might (and probably don’t) not know anything about this band nor care one iota about heavy metal, but that won’t delude your enjoyment of this film in the least. ‘The Story Of Anvil’ is a remarkably gratifying and universal tale and probably one of our favorite movies of the year so far; it was that fucking good.
Noted texturalist David Torn composed the moving Mogwai-like score (he also wrote the score to “The Wackness” coming out later this summer among many other great scores like the recent “Lars And The Real Girl” one) and apart from featuring a shit-ton of Anvil songs, the film also features tracks from Explosions In The Sky, Air and Alice Cooper to name a few (but yes, it’s all about Anvil at the end of the day). So yeah, highly, highly recommended. More on this film in the next few weeks including details revealed in the Q&A and afterwards. PS, their website rules.