Robb Reiner – Anvil – Bloodstock Open Air 2012 Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Jim Rowland
Thursday, 06 September 2012 04:00
This year’s Bloodstock festival finally saw Canadian metal pounders Anvil back where they belong – on the main stage of a major UK festival for the first time in a very long time. With the band’s profile sky high following the success of the legendary ‘Anvil! The Story Of Anvil’ movie, and the subsequent success of the ‘Juggernaut Of Justice’ album, they had a hectic press schedule on their hands. Sadly, I didn’t get to meet up with frontman Lips this time round, but all turned out fine as Anvil’s influential powerhouse drummer Robb Reiner found the time to talk to me about the band’s impressions of Bloodstock, what the band have been up to recently and most importantly, what they will be up to next, which certainly produced some pretty mind-blowing revelations…
I think I’m right that this is the first appearance by Anvil on the main stage of a UK festival since 1983
I’ve never looked at it that way, but you could be right. I don’t go into the stats about what we do, but that’s pretty good – could be! We play at lots of festivals, so half the time I don’t know which stage it is. (laughing)
What are your impressions of Bloodstock?
It’s not too big a festival; it’s the right size. I don’t know how many people watched Anvil – five thousand, seven thousand? It’s a smaller intimate festival, it’s a good size, has great energy and I would play here again.
And this isn’t the first time you’ve been on the bill with Alice Cooper
We did a whole bunch of shows with Alice in Canada, a couple in the States and a bunch of these festivals. We played with him the other night. Alice is a good guy, we’ve hung out with him and he really enjoys doing this still. Right now, he’s into it. He’s all about how good his band is. The songs are the songs, and he delivers. He’s gonna be singing his ass off all night.
Over the past year, there’s been a massive reissue campaign of all the albums from ‘Strength Of Steel’ right up to ‘This Is Thirteen’.
All of ’em! Every record that we’ve had that hasn’t been out has come out again.
Any favourites?
No I don’t. In my opinion all Anvil records have something to offer. They offer something to me, so I kinda like something about every album. If it’s the songs, the drumming, the production, concept, whatever. There’s lots of great material there and I want the whole world to know that. No more excuses! We’ve put out the records, if you really like the band, go fuckin’ buy em! Here’s your opportunity to do what you haven’t done. For years I’ve heard people bitchin’ “I love your music but I can’t find it”, and they were right, you couldn’t find it. Now you can find it, everybody can find it. If you want this shit, it’s there. That was the whole idea behind it. We didn’t want to price it too high, it’s good music, discover it! We’ll play that stuff for you man, just get to know the stuff and we’ll play it. We’re in a position where people want to do business with us, so okay let’s do it and put it all out again. With the movie, everything happened real fast and we couldn’t keep up with all these things. We got it all going but it takes time, so we’re finally getting it done. We’ve got more things to do and more new music to make.
You’ve been to some new territories as well, you recently went to Taiwan
Just recently. I didn’t realise we were known there either, but the same as everywhere else, the movie opened the door. The movie was huge there so we went and played and it was crazy, it was great. I think we could play there again no problem. It’s similar to Japan.
So you’ve finished the tour now, and you’re going back home. Tell us a bit about the next Anvil album.
All I can tell you is we’re thinking of calling the album ‘Hope In Hell’. We have six songs for it and we’re going to write fourteen. We hope to have it recorded by the end of the year and try and bring it out springtime next year. We’re really trying to plan things but you never know how things go. There’s also plans for a second Anvil movie called ‘Anvil 2 – The Quest for World Peace’
So what’s that going to be about?
It’s going to be a heavy duty concept. The genesis of it is that Lips and myself are going to try to rally the whole world into a peace concert in Israel at the Wailing Wall. We’re going to try to pull this off. We’re gonna ask everybody and we’re gonna film our quest to do it. We’re gonna ask everybody – corporations, rock stars, celebrities, the world. Okay, we all want peace. We love peace and we really believe in it. We all do. We all wanna live without that shit, we’ll live with everything else, just not THAT shit. That’s our point of view; let’s all us humans try something new. Lets try it – all of us. Religion separates everything, let’s get rid of stuff. We don’t fuckin need this shit. So it’s gonna be a heavy message we’re gonna try and put out there I think. People think maybe we’re crazy, but we’re gonna tell the world what we think anyway. So we’re gonna film all of this, that’s the plan. Right now they’re behind the scenes to try and figure out the logistics somehow to see if they can pull this off for real. We could stage one, it’s a movie, right? No, again we want to do it like the first one – it’s going to be reality, we’re going to try to do this but we don’t know what’s going to happen. We didn’t really know what was going to happen with the first movie behind the scenes. We had gut feelings, but nobody really knew nothing. So let’s make this movie and see if the world digs it. Do you hear what I’m saying?
I do Robb, and I’m speechless! That’s cool.
It’s a heavy thing to pull off, but we’re just regular metal guys, people even. We’re gonna try to give back. I’ll put my time into this, I believe in it, and I wanna rock! We’re gonna try to bring the Jews and Palestinians together in one place and rock out. It we pull it off we’re gonna just film it. That’s how life is, if you really wanna try something, then try it! That first movie had some power, and there’s an interest in Anvil. People maybe want to see more of us, but we’re gonna be doing something different. Sacha is talking about in the first ten minutes of the new movie, there’ll be a montage of what’s happened to Anvil over the last five years – this is what happened to the guys. Then the movie’s gonna take a ninety degree turn and we’re gonna do the ‘let’s get a peace concert going’ deal and we’ll see what happens and we’ll film everything.
That’ll be amazing, I really hope that comes off for you.
So do I. It is a great idea. Nobody’s thinking of something like this, so we are.
Good for you Robb. And on that bombshell, I’ll call it a day there. Thanks for talking to me for Uber Rock.
Always a pleasure, man.
[New line up pics courtesy of Dalila Kriheli http://rockstarpix.com/]
