Anvil: A Rocumentary For The Ages

“It could never be worse than what it already is."
- Steve 'Lips' Kudlow

If you were a metal fan in that tangled-up-in-spandex period between AC/DC's Back In Black, Metallica's ascent and Gun & Roses' Appetite For Destruction, you know what a truly desperate time it was. A different breed was roaming the earth challenging audiences with bouffant hairstyles, dayglo attire and...a vibrator. I tried to take refuge in post-Ozzy Sabbath, but the gnomish antics of Ronnie James Dio and that other guy from Deep Purple were just too much to bear.

Enter Anvil. As Canadian as Loverboy was American, they carried the torch by combining punk's righteous thrash with the brute power of metal. Their hilarious and touching film, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, has gone on to become one of the best films of 2009 and the best rocumentary of the decade. Rock on!



The film’s director, Sacha Gervasi - the band called him 'Teabag' because he’s English — worked on an archive of Samuel Beckett material after his tenure as an Anvil roadie in the 80s. He obviously revels in the parallels. As Anthony Lane in the New Yorker put it:

"This film is not about rock music at all, still less about school lunches in Ontario, or unusual uses for vibrators; it is about time, and how it threatens to fade us out like a song on the radio, and why, risking ridicule, and leaning on love, we should crank up the volume and keep going. Whatever Lips maintains, not all has been said and done."