FeedAnvil! The Story of Anvil
June 7 2009, 7:15pm
I listened to a lot of metal as a kid, but I was never one of those obsessive metal fans who dug deeper & deeper into the 2nd and 3rd tiers of metal bands . . . so I never [knowingly] heard Anvil, even though their '81 - '84 heyday overlaps with my main metal-listening period.
No matter: honestly, I don't know that any real familiarity with the genre, let alone the band, is even required in order to enjoy this movie. Simply put, this is the "American Movie" of music documentaries. Couple of kinda lunkheady, but incredibly sweet & touching working-class dudes from Toronto have been playing together in bands since they were teens in the '70s, and they're still convinced that big break is somewhere just around the corner.
What makes it particularly, excruciatingly poignant is that they actually already *had* that break, back in the 80s -- the movie prominently features footage of them playing at a giant Japanese metal fest in '84 in front of 10s of 1000s of fans, along with all the other big names of the era. Pretty much everyone else on the bill went on to achieve some measure of mid-80s metal success, except for Anvil.
The movie follows them on a star-crossed European tour that seems tragic when compared with their dreams of how it should be -- but which otherwise seems a lot like the European tour stories I've heard from my friends in indie-rock bands. In fact, generally speaking, the only real gap between the guys in Anvil and so many of the people I know is that the guys in Anvil still believe that massive major-label success is possible.
Or at least they do until the point late in the movie where they give up on shopping their new album (recorded, at great expense, with the metal producer Chris Tsangarides, who does a much better job than the boys at hiding his near-obsolescence) around to labels and decide to just have it pressed themselves, and sell it direct to fans. You feel like grabbing them & hugging them & saying "welcome to the 21st Century!" (although a visit to their website will rocket you straight back to 1996)
The movie is well-shot, well-edited, and encounters the band at a make-or-break point in their musical and personal lives. In short, it's everything a great documentary should be. I'd love to see it again, perhaps back-to-back with Jason Summers' awesome Dead Moon documentary Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story.
No matter: honestly, I don't know that any real familiarity with the genre, let alone the band, is even required in order to enjoy this movie. Simply put, this is the "American Movie" of music documentaries. Couple of kinda lunkheady, but incredibly sweet & touching working-class dudes from Toronto have been playing together in bands since they were teens in the '70s, and they're still convinced that big break is somewhere just around the corner.
What makes it particularly, excruciatingly poignant is that they actually already *had* that break, back in the 80s -- the movie prominently features footage of them playing at a giant Japanese metal fest in '84 in front of 10s of 1000s of fans, along with all the other big names of the era. Pretty much everyone else on the bill went on to achieve some measure of mid-80s metal success, except for Anvil.
The movie follows them on a star-crossed European tour that seems tragic when compared with their dreams of how it should be -- but which otherwise seems a lot like the European tour stories I've heard from my friends in indie-rock bands. In fact, generally speaking, the only real gap between the guys in Anvil and so many of the people I know is that the guys in Anvil still believe that massive major-label success is possible.
Or at least they do until the point late in the movie where they give up on shopping their new album (recorded, at great expense, with the metal producer Chris Tsangarides, who does a much better job than the boys at hiding his near-obsolescence) around to labels and decide to just have it pressed themselves, and sell it direct to fans. You feel like grabbing them & hugging them & saying "welcome to the 21st Century!" (although a visit to their website will rocket you straight back to 1996)
The movie is well-shot, well-edited, and encounters the band at a make-or-break point in their musical and personal lives. In short, it's everything a great documentary should be. I'd love to see it again, perhaps back-to-back with Jason Summers' awesome Dead Moon documentary Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story.
