Anvil’s Hope In Hell record has some pretty clear messages. “When you write lyrics, your state of mind always seems to revel itself, whether you want it to or not,” singer/ guitarist Steven ‘Lips’ Kudlow explains. “My surroundings at the time ended up being conveyed throughout. It’s about making your dreams come true, believing in yourself and going after something with a vengeance.”
Lips has no time for negativity and delivers a clear message to his doubters. “Of course with the onset of the movie there were a lot of neigh-sayers that told us it wouldn’t last ten minutes. ‘Enjoy your 15 minutes while it lasts’, those kind of sentiments. Creating songs like Eat Your Words or Shut The Fuck Up, that’s who it was directed at.”
The band’s notoriety skyrocketed following the 2009 movie Anvil: The Story Of Anvil, a Spinal Tap-esque rockumentary on the rise, fall and semi-rise-again of ‘The Demi-Gods Of Canadian Metal’. “We certainly didn’t win the millions of fans that our good friends in AC/DC got, but people know who I am nonetheless. Are they going to buy an Anvil record because they know who I am? Probably not.”
The unfaltering commitment and positivity displayed by Lips and the boys gave the band and the movie so much appeal, and meant they could connect with such a broad spectrum of new fans. “Some of the demographics of people that liked the movie are off the charts. We were standing outside a fast-food restaurant in Chicago a couple of years ago and a limousine pulls over to the side of the road and this rich lawyer pulls out his camera and starts taking pictures of Robb and me and then asking for an autograph. Five minutes later a garbage truck pulls over and a 200-pound black guy gets out from behind the wheel with his cell-phone going, ‘can I take a picture dude?’ and we’re going, ‘how does that work?’”
Lips’ friendship with drummer and best mate Robb Reiner was laid bare in the movie, offering an intimate picture of two personalities, which complete one another. “We really take our friendship for granted. Not in a negative way, but we just kind of think that everybody’s got a buddy that they spent their life with. It wasn’t ‘til really after the movie that we came to realise that we’re not that common. We look at it as a gift, and we definitely have a deeper appreciation for what we have.”
Anvil will always be known as the band that should have made it but never did, and have been lauded as the inspiration for metal bands from Anthrax to Slayer. “The first letdown and failure was after our third record. We created a record that was 20 years ahead of its time. All the labels should have been interested but we were not really at the right place at the right time and they passed.”
Anvil’s lifeblood and reason for being has always been playing live for their die-hard fans. “It is addictive. The endorphins that are released in your bloodstream from the excitement and the feeling that you’re in a room full of people that love you is overwhelming. Those are the moments I am most alive — that and when I’m having sex with my wife. It’s hard to say which is more enjoyable.”
The upcoming November tour will mark the band’s third visit down under. “It’s like coming to Canada number two. You’re money looks like ours, your grocery stores and fast-food places are the same companies as ours and have the same looking streets and architecture. It’s a British colony just like Canada, you can tell. You go ‘G’day” and I say ‘Yah, eh, have a great day eh!’”
BY NICHOLAS ATKINS
