Anvil Is Anvil

Since Lemmy's death and the subsequent end of Motorhead, Anvil are perhaps the only remaining band that still represents classic heavy metal and rock 'n' roll lifestyle these days. While Lemmy and his band are slightly overrated by the masses, Anvil never got the credit it truly deserved. The indestructible Canadian trio doesn't offer anything new on its sixteenth studio record but does what it knows best with an addicting charm, energy and passion.

If compared to the unfairly underrated predecessor ''Hope in Hell'' that offered almost everything from doom metal over rock and roll to speed metal, ''Anvil is Anvil'' sounds a lot more homogeneous. Nearly all songs here are classic mid-tempo heavy metal tunes. Some people might claim that this is a proof of consistency but I think that this output includes a few more fillers than the last one. The band can still convince with certain parts in their average tracks. ''Ambush'' includes the most emotional guitar solo on the entire album even if the rest is rather exchangeable. The rhythmical stomper ''Gun Control'' and the drum-driven ''Die for a Lie'' include some intelligent lyrics about controversially discussed topics.

The band though convinces most when it actually tries out something new. The opener ''Daggers and Rum'' is an absolutely brilliant pirate anthem that should work extremely well in concert. With its great choirs and gang shouts, simple yet heavy riffs and joyous violin samples, this track is better than anything bands such as Running Wild have released in decades. The song manages to offer something new to the band sound after so many years. It's played with so much enthusiasm that the out-of-tone vocals don't take anything away from the efficiency of this track but might even add a raw charm to it. The bass-driven and slow stomper ''Zombie Apocalypse'' convinces with a darker, more hypnotizing and more psychedelic mood than usual even if the topic has been overused in the genre over the past few years. The drum- and bass-driven closer ''Forgive Don't Forget'' is short and to the point and offers both intelligent lyrics and a simplistic yet catchy anthemic chorus. The bonus track ''Never Going to Stop'' is also worth your attention and turns out to be a passionate rock 'n' roll anthem that sums up everything this genre represents and this band stands for.

Despite a few average tracks that can especially be found in the first half of the record, Anvil offers another passionate release somewhere between hard rock and heavy metal. Despite the old school trademarks, the band's enthusiasm is not only timeless but even an example to follow for many other veterans that only offer tired routine jobs these days and for the next generation that often tends to forget about the roots of heavy metal. The album title ''Anvil is Anvil'' sums up everything this band stands for and what this album sounds like. Fans will definitely adore this release and those who have never liked Anvil will clearly not change their minds about this band after this album. Those who are still mourning the loss of Motorhead should turn the page and enjoy this record and band to the fullest, if possible in concert somewhere near you.

If Anvil! The Story of Anvil and its two neighboring studio efforts This is Thirteen and Juggernaut of Justice marked a resurgence or Renaissance for the beloved Canadian thugs, possessing their strongest material in many years, and affording them all manner of touring opportunities and a perpetual underdog spotlight...Hope is Hell sort of dashed that streak against the rocks, a mundane and forgettable effort redolent of many of such works they released tirelessly through the 90s as they leaped around labels and tried to stay afloat in a decade or so in which real heavy metal sunk into the background of other prevalent sub-genres and trends. Working up to Anvil Is Anvil, their 16th album, I did not hold out much hope, hellish or otherwise, that this would be anything more than lazy redundancy, as the cover image and banal title would themselves seem to suggest...but thankfully, this is a measure more entertaining and catchy than its predecessor, with most of their strengths and all their flaws on exhibition.

Big, dumb, choppy heavy metal. Anvil has long relied on the joy and innocence they bring to their riff set more than any sense of nuance or technicality, which arguably fled the band's trajectory well back into the 80s after Pound for Pound (my favorite of their records). And here they are, chugging along like an 18-wheeler on the Trans-Canada Highway while the driver dreams of big haired 80s blondes, lumberjack attire, bleacher brawls at hockey rinks, ganja, brewskies and maple fucking syrup. Coincidentally, those are exactly the same stereotypes, I imagine as I'm listening through the sometimes thundering, sometimes lurching compositions which have been meted out evenly over most of their albums since Metal on Metal. Here you've got clear cases of both, charging along with "Up, Down, Sideways" or one of this disc's "Metal on Metals", "Gun Control". Riff construction is constant, concrete heavy blues worship which occasionally sputters into the Judas Priest or Accept lanes, while Robb's drums are as loud, appropriate and invigorating as ever. New bassist Chris Robertson grooves along accordingly, a solid bar band-style contributor which is nothing less than what Anvil requires, and Mattes Pfeiffer's production on this thing is bright, bludgeoning and beyond functional, especially on those mid-paced rhythms.

Then, of course, you've got Lips' belting out those obvious, everyman lyrics which are often pretty dumb, but again appropriate for an old metal band that has no desire whatsoever become anything else, and that's not exactly a weakness. His voice still has all the character it's carried for the past 30 years...wavering eerily at its higher range, but most comfortable with a hard bite that carries over well into an anthemic chorus line. This has always been the Canadians' #1 distinction, and I'm happy that it's been a constant, even if about half the choruses on this record are unmemorable and bland. Plus the album opens with a pirate song. Lead guitars wail along with abandon, just as alive as the rhythm section during those parts ("Die for a Lie", etc), and they never feel overly prepared to leech away attention from the rest of the components surrounding them. In the end, a longstanding Anvil fan is likely to have as good a time here as he's had with any of their other 21st century output. Expectations have never been set very high, the band lacks any ability to transition into any other plane of craftsmanship, so it's going to come down to whether the songs stick or miss, and with this thing cranked in the vehicle, I'd say that the former occurs more often than the latter, even if these are just endless reiterations of prototype tunes that they've been rehashing for decades. Loud, proud, pumped full of Cialis, this is textbook Anvil. Lips is pushing 60 now, and his music sounds like it tears asphalt at about that same speed, but with an armor plated grill that can plow poseurs right off into the breakdown ditch.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Whilst Anvil may not be exactly a household name, they have carved out a well-earned reputation in heavy metal and put out several classic albums back in the eighties and even showed a certain level of consistency in their later releases that isn't always common with veteran bands. Anvil is Anvil marks their sixteenth full-length album and it may not be a huge departure in their style, but it certainly lacks pretty much everything that made their good records as good as they were.

Most of all, this album seems to be the result of a contest amongst the band members of how many bandwagons they could jump on at once. To go along with Alestorm's rising popularity, you have the clunker of an album opener, “Daggers and Rum”. A couple tracks later, the same folks who brought us the eloquent lyrics of “Motormount” decide to tackle the hot topic of gun control in the United States. And before we even get to the middle of the album, we have a song about Zombies just in time for the middle of the sixth season of The Walking Dead. Of course, there isn't anything wrong with singing about those topics, but the problem here isn't the topics themselves but rather the poor execution thereof. Both the lyrics and the songs themselves sound disjointed and sterile as opposed to fluid and organic. It seems they wanted to take a more mature approach to songwriting and move away from their more juvenile topics, but in the process they just come across like a bunch of blowhards.

But I don't want to get too hung up on the misfired lyrics since there are some strong riffs here, to be sure. At least half the songs have some decently memorable openers including “Die For a Lie” and “It's Your Move”. But then so much of the rest of the album just plods along with riffs that are either overly generic or mediocre and others that are just comically bad, like pretty much everything on the entirety of the tracks “Zombie Apocalypse” and “Forgive Don't Forget”.

The vocals are equally inconsistent, but fortunately they follow a pretty predictable pattern: the songs with solid riffs have good vocals; those with crumby riffs have bad vocals. What this means is that it's easy to identify the highlights and low spots on the album. It's hard to say precisely what makes the bad vocals so bad, but the one thing that they all seem to have in common is that they are all pretty low on the register and sound completely forced. Heavy metal can work just fine with heavier and grittier vocals, but they need to be done in a way that complements the rest of the band as opposed to working against it. In this case, you end up with a lot of good music being ruined by blustering vocals.

In a way, this album is like a portrait of Anvil's career as a whole: some great spots but ultimately inconsistent. I guess the title Anvil is Anvil is a pretty apt name for this release after all.

Originally written for The Metal Observer.