Anvil
Fowlers Live
12 November 2017
Review by Jason Leigh
Having missed first support Shadows Realm, I arrived during second support Hidden Intent’s set. I noted that there was a general uniformity among the audience realising I had overlooked the dress code of black t-shirt and recognised that this was not my usual fare. It was obvious even at this early stage there were going to be a few stiff necks tomorrow.
Anvil commenced their set with front man, singer and guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow entering the audience and with no microphone to amplify his voice he lifts his guitar and holds the pickups to his mouth to announce, “We are Anvil and we playing heavy f**king metal”. He then plays an instrumental, the audience enclosing him with phones and cameras raised to capture this seemingly personal moment. Meanwhile on stage Chris Robertson and Robb Reiner, on bass and drums respectively, are all but ignored. Lips rejoins the band and during the next hour and a half that they are performing there is frequent encouragement of audience participation as they play a sound either influenced by or contemporary with (whichever way you look at it) the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. There are no posed, grim-faced expressions here, the band are having fun and, even before Lips announces that they are so happy to be allowed to make a living doing what they do, there is no doubt that they are enjoying themselves and show it by grinning all around.
Lips is obviously proudly Canadian, his Anvil singlet top sports the nation’s red Maple leaf motif and on his right wrist he’s wearing a wristband of the Canadian flag. He mentions that it has been a while since they have last been here and surveying the audience he says, “I can see some grey hair. I can see some no hair”. He is like a warm up man for his own band, asking, “Do you like rock ’n’ roll? Here’s some Badass Rock ’n’ Roll”, conducting the audience in a sing along of the song’s title. He describes himself as an old hippy and espouses the benefits of smoking pot to end war -“Everyone would be sitting around too stoned to do anything” – prior to an intro for “Winged Assassins” on which Reiner performs a military drum roll while his band mates face each other and exchange salutes. Dedicating a song to the departed Lemmy Kilmister, Lips precedes it with a couple of stories including his best impersonation of Lemmy from around the time of their first tour as Anvil following a name change during which they supported Motorhead. Lips enquires, “How many people have seen the Anvil movie?” to an overwhelming response, then groans and continues, “So you’ve seen me naked”.
There is something vaguely Lovecraftian in the way the breeze from the cooling fans is blowing Lips’ long unruly hair like octopus tentacles which is unintentionally realised with the next song. The sprawling epic “Mothra” is unarguably the set centrepiece, a mini symphony, prog-rock-like in execution with multiple diversions throughout including Lips soloing with a silver metallic coloured vibrator in a slide-guitar style. I wonder how this might play out in the case of a luggage check at an airport and what comes to mind is that scene in Spinal Tap when the silver foil wrapped zucchini is discovered by a metal detector. He continues with what I can only describe as a “whale” guitar solo, something along the lines of a guitar playing style that Adrian Belew almost has a patent on. There’s the slightly politically incorrect “Ah so” as Robertson and Lips bow to each other in a Japanese style before playing an oriental coda. This extended version of the song ends with a send up of a Ritchie Blackmore solo, Lips hammering then bending each note into a higher pitch, pausing between notes to announce, “It’s getting higher. It’s getting higher”. During their own metal version of a sea shanty, “Daggers and Rum”, Robertson has a more family friendly prop in the form of a pair of sunglasses displaying twin 3D images of a skull and crossbones.
After Lips praises the only other Anvil mainstay Reiner as his best friend, he and Robertson allow the drummer the spotlight to solo. The set ends on the classic “Metal on Metal” then there’s the encore with the final song being a cover version of the possibly self-referential “Born to be Wild”, before the band join each other at the front of the stage to bow and share appreciation with an audience that has been thoroughly sated.
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