ANVIL Completes Pre-Production Rehearsals For Next Studio Album

Canadian metal legends ANVIL have completed the pre-production rehearsals for their upcoming studio album. According to drummer Robb Reiner, the sessions have yielded "another 14 tracks crushing true to form".

ANVIL was scheduled to fly from Canada to Germany on Sunday (August 20) to begin recording the new album with longtime producer Martin "Mattes" Pfeiffer and Jörg Uken at Uken's Soundlodge studios in Germany. The same production team was responsible for ANVIL's last four albums, "Anvil Is Anvil" (2016),"Pounding The Pavement" (2018),"Legal At Last" (2019) and "Impact Is Imminent" (2022).

This past January, MVD Marquee Collection released the "Ultimate Edition" Blu-ray and "Standard Edition" DVD of ANVIL's acclaimed documentary, "Anvil! The Story Of Anvil".

The new version of the film features remastered picture and sound, as well as a new exclusive epilogue interview with director Sacha Gervasi and ANVIL frontman Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Reiner moderated by former MTV host Matt Pinfield.

The remastered "Anvil! The Story Of Anvil" received its premiere in conjunction with Beyond Fest last September in Los Angeles at the Saban Theater, where ANVIL also performed. This was followed by a question-and-answer session with Kudlow, Reiner, producer Rebecca Yeldham and Gervasi, moderated by Steve-O from "Jackass".

Last fall, Lips spoke to the French metal radio show "Metal Zone" on Oxygène Radio about ANVIL's unwillingness to pay attention to music trends while working on new songs. He said: "It was never about radio play. It was never about being posers. It was always about high-integrity, as-heavy-as-possible music. And that's what it was really about. And we didn't wanna become one of the bands that puts out a couple of heavy albums and then goes soft and tries to get on the radio; that was not our idea. We wanted to stay true to what we started and continue to do."

Asked how he has evolved as a songwriter since ANVIL's inception more than four decades ago, Lips said: "Yeah, I would say I've learned a lot of things. One thing I've learned more than anything else is about self-recognition. I think that I lacked my own belief in myself and didn't realize that, really, I shaped and formed everything all along and I didn't really need the help and that help generally was more of a hindrance than actually helping. And that's what I've kind of discovered more in the later years, that I probably could have done a better job in earlier records had I taken the bull by the horns and been a tyrant and overstepped everybody who was trying to get their two cents in. Because what generally happens [is] I have a vision, I have an idea and I have the whole song in my mind, and if I come into rehearsal and if it's not completely settled with me, it ends up going off topic and off target, because I've allowed other people into the equation that they're not gonna know what's gonna happen or how to really do it. It's a much more pure place that I'm coming from now. I sit down and write all the music, I create all the guitar parts before I go in. Then I present it to the other two guys, and they write their accompaniment to it. That seems to be the best format. I don't have to have a discussion with the singer, because I am the singer."