Anvil – ‘Multitudes Of Metal – The Reissues’ (Steamhammer/SPV and Sony Music)
Written by Jim Rowland
Sunday, 22 January 2012 04:45
The period in Anvil’s history following the release of their third album 1983’s ‘Forged In Fire’, is by the band’s own admission, where the rot started to set in, and ultimately leading to the situation we found them in during the ‘Anvil! The Story Of Anvil’ film. ‘Forged In Fire’ suffered from production problems and although the music it contains has now been reassessed as ‘ahead of its time’, critically at least, it didn’t exactly go down well at the time, failing to capitalise on the success of the previous album ‘Metal On Metal’.
Anvil still managed to enjoy a high profile in the live arena on the back of ‘Forged In Fire’, playing support slots with the likes of Motorhead, and appearing at top festivals worldwide. In the space of four months back in ’83, I managed to see Anvil three times here in the UK. It would be another 24 years before I got the chance again. An initially promising management arrangement with David Krebs went sour before too long, and the band ended up with no management and no record deal. It was four long years before they finally managed to release a follow up to ‘Forged in Fire’, and by then momentum had been badly lost, and the band’s fortunes would continue in a downward spiral for many years after that.
Of course in 2012 Anvil are in a much happier place, and their new home of SPV Records have started a reissue campaign of Anvil’s ‘wilderness years’ back catalogue, starting with the three studio albums that followed ‘Forged In Fire’ – 1987’s ‘Strength Of Steel’, 1988’s ‘Pound For Pound’ and 1992’s ‘Worth The Weight’, all lovingly remastered and released on coloured vinyl as well as CD. In fact, ‘Worth The Weight’ appears on vinyl for the very first time.
So back to ’87, and finally Anvil get to release their fourth studio album, ‘Strength Of Steel’, via Metal Blade. The first thing you notice about ‘Strength Of Steel’ is the picture of the band on the back cover. This was 1987, and by then the ‘hair metal’ movement was in full swing, as was the thrash metal movement. Ironically, whilst bands that Anvil had directly influenced such as Metallica and Anthrax were enjoying rising stardom decked out in ripped jeans and Misfits t-shirts, Anvil made the mistake of looking more like Motley Crue or Ratt on this album, dressed in red and black leather with fluffed up hair. Even Lips’ bondage outfit had received the red leather and tassel makeover. This was not Anvil the fast and frantic metal pounders we remembered. It instantly yelled ‘sell out’ or ‘wimp out’ and certainly gave the impression that this record was going to be Anvil’s attempt to jump on the glam metal bandwagon. That may well have put people off even listening to the record, which is a shame because despite the dodgy image, this is a damn good, heavy Anvil record. It may not be the harder, faster proto thrash of ‘Forged In Fire’ or ‘Metal On Metal’, and it may have a slightly more mid tempo commercial edge to it in places, but it’s a great Anvil heavy metal record regardless.
‘Strength Of Steel’ still holds up against the more illustrious Anvil title tracks, and ‘Concrete Jungle’, for me the album’s finest moment, is a forgotten Anvil gem, a mean and moody masterpiece with some scorching tribal drumming from Robb. The brilliantly titled ‘Flight Of The Bumble Beast’ is a decent instrumental along the lines of ‘March Of The Crabs’, whilst ‘Cut Loose’ is vintage pounding Anvil reminiscent of the earlier ‘Metal’ or ‘Forged’ material. ‘Mad Dog’ is another highlight, spotlighting the influence that Ted Nugent had on the band, not too surprising as they performed a lot of Nugent material in their formative years. ‘Kiss Of Death’ is another corker, with a doomy flavour and a monumental Sabbeth-esque riff, not a million miles away from the ‘Forged In Fire’ or ‘This Is Thirteen’ vibe, and the album finishes on a strong note with ‘Paper General’, another up tempo metal pounder reminiscent of the ‘Forged’ material. It’s not all great though, and whilst ‘9-2-5’ and ‘I Dreamed It was The End Of The World’ are solid if unspectacular tracks, ‘Straight Between The Eyes’, (the last track to feature the vocals of Dave ‘Squirrelly’ Allison), and the pretty awful ‘Wild Eyes’ are unlikely to make a return to an Anvil live set any time soon.
Having waited four years between the third and fourth albums, Anvil wasted no time in following up ‘Strength Of Steel’ with ‘Pound For Pound’ the following year, once again on Metal Blade. The dodgy image of ‘Strength Of Steel’ was gone, and here was Anvil back to basics looking like they should look. Also gone were the commercial leanings, so ‘Pound For Pound’ was a true fast and furious ultra heavy affair with Anvil returning to the sound they were born to make. ‘Blood On The Ice’ is a heavy bruiser about violence in ice hockey, and ‘Corporate Preacher’ is a slower, menacing track tackling the evils of TV evangelism. ‘Toe Jam’ is a frenzied and fun metal hoedown containing some classic Lips’ trademark double-entendre sexual innuendo lyrics, and talking of classic Lips lyrics, the thrashy ‘Safe Sex’, the only song I can think of written in homage to the condom, contains some corkers – ‘weenie wrap, collect the sap’…’Yank it, Crank it, piggies in a blanket’- this is why Anvil are so much goddamn fun! Elsewhere, ‘Brain Burn’ and the excellent ‘Machine Gun’ are full on, full pelt Anvil thrashers, whilst ‘Senile King’ and ‘Fire In The Night’ are solid chunks of pure metal. Perhaps the only odd one out is ‘Where Does All the Money Go’ which ironically does sound quite a lot like Motley Crue – perhaps those outfits were still lurking somewhere in the Anvil closet!
Although Anvil released a good live album in 1988 – ‘Past And Present’- it was to be another four years before they managed to release another studio album. In that time the band’s fortunes continued in a downward spiral, and they suffered some personal tragedies as well. They also faced the loss of guitarist Dave Allison, who had simply had enough. ‘Worth The Weight’ came out in 1992 on Mausoleum records, and featured new guitarist Sebastian Marino. It was the only album that would feature Marino, and was also the last to feature original bassist Ian Dickson. Having got their heavy mojo back with ‘Pound For Pound’, things were cranked up another notch with ‘Worth The Weight’, the hardest and heaviest Anvil album to date. It’s also a very dark album. When I met up with Lips last year, he was talking about how your environment affects the mood of your writing. In contrast to the happy environment of their latest album ‘Juggernaut Of Justice’, he used ‘Worth The Weight’ as an example of the complete opposite. By 1992, the band had been through some bad stuff, so lyrically this album features some dark subject matter, none more so than the epic opener ‘Infanticide’. A lot of the songs on ‘Worth The Weight’ are a lot lengthier that we’d become accustomed to with Anvil, and at 8 minutes, ‘Infacticide’ isn’t even the longest, with that honour going to the outstanding closing track ‘Sadness/Love Me When I’m Dead’ which hits the 9 minute mark. Both these tracks demonstrate a bit of a Metallica influence, and both build from a ‘Fade To Black’ style acoustic feel to full blown heaviness. These are probably the highlights of the album, and show the band breaking new, ambitious ground. ‘On The Way To Hell’ has excellent Sabbathy riff, and ‘Pow Wow’, as the name suggests, has a bit of a Native American vibe to it. Elsewhere, ‘Bushpig’ is a great heads down no nonsense slice of speed metal, and ‘Embalmer’ has a bit of a Priest vibe to it.
‘Worth The Weight’ is the most consistent of the three albums on offer here, and shows that in the face of adversity, good things can still come. It’s hard to pick the best, as there’s not a lot in it between ‘Pound’ and ‘Weight’, but if you’ve got the classic first three Anvil albums and want to delve a bit deeper, any of these three would be worthwhile additions to your collection, especially with the coloured vinyl editions available.
If you’re still a bit of an Anvil virgin, but are curious to dip your toes into the Anvil waters, you can’t go far wrong with another recent release, the excellent budget priced compilation ‘Monument Of Metal’ released via Sony Music. At £3.99, it’s a real no-brainer of a purchase, as it features 19 tracks spanning the band’s entire career from their first album ‘Hard ‘n’ Heavy’ right through to last year’s triumphant ‘Juggernaut Of Justice’. Some of the earlier tracks are recent, heavier re-recordings such as ‘Metal On Metal’ and ‘666’, which both featured on the vinyl version of ‘This Is Thirteen’, whilst ‘School Love’ and ‘Winged Assassins’ have been re-recorded especially for this project. ‘Heat Sink’ and ‘March Of The Crabs’ are two corkers from ‘Metal On Metal’, as is the mighty ‘Mothra’, still to this day my fave Anvil tune. The superb ‘American Refugee’ is an inspired choice from ‘This Is Thirteen’ and ‘Juggernaut Of justice’ is proof positive that Anvil right now are back on top of their game. ‘Thumb Hang’, which you may remember from the film, and also featured as a ‘This Is Thirteen’ bonus track, is an essential inclusion too, and ‘Mad Dog’, ‘Sins Of The Flesh’, and ‘Fire In The Night’ all feature from the first batch of re-issues reviewed here. All in all, this is essential Anvil, but there’s nothing more essential than catching the Anvil live experience, which thankfully we’ll all get a chance to do at this year’s Bloodstock festival.
Keep on poundin’!