ANVIL's LIPS: 'We Got F***ed' By The Music Business

Guitarist/vocalist Steve "Lips" Kudlow of Canadian metal legends ANVIL was asked in a new interview with the "Heavy Metal Mayhem" radio show if he thinks the band would still exist if it hadn't been for the success of their documentary, "Anvil! The Story Of Anvil". He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Of course we would still exist. We existed before the movie for fucking 13 albums, man, so why wouldn't we exist after it?

"Actually, you know what's really interesting, and this is something people should consider: if the band was shit and really was meaningless, the movie would never have been made to begin with," he continued. "That's the first step. And it was because of the music and the breakthrough and the amazingness that the band possessed that drove a kid to come back 30-something years later and make a movie about the injustice to something that deserved fame, the injustice that happened. Want to right a wrong — that's what it was all about; that's what the whole thing was about. It's not that the band was undeserving. We got fucked by the business. And you can perceive it and look at it any fucking way you want, but you weren't in the fucking car so you didn't see what the fuck happened when it got wrecked. You weren't there. You didn't witness the accident. I was in the accident — I witnessed it — so I know what the fuck happened. So you wanna blame it on the band? No. You can't blame it on the band; the band had huge, huge potential at a particular point in time and then had the rug pulled out underneath them at the worst time that it could have ever happened — in 1983. Bye. We were opening for fucking AEROSMITH, everything is happening, and then all of a sudden we're not. No record company, no fucking tours, no fucking nothing. It's over. And you don't put out another record for four fucking years, the most important years in heavy metal?"

"Anvil! The Story of Anvil" was named one of 2009's best documentaries by a slew of film critics associations across the continent, including critics in Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, and Las Vegas, as well as the International Documentary Association, the Online Film Critics Society, and the National Society of Film Critics. It also made the year-end Top 10 lists in publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Village Voice.

"Anvil! The Story of Anvil" was the directorial debut of screenwriter Sacha Gervasi ("The Terminal") and was produced by Rebecca Yeldham ("The Kite Runner" and "The Motorcycle Diaries"). The film follows Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner and their band, ANVIL, which released one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's "Metal on Metal". The album influenced an entire musical generation of rock bands, including METALLICA, SLAYER, and ANTHRAX, who all went on to sell millions of records. ANVIL, on the other hand, took a different path — straight to obscurity. The film was both entertaining and touching as it followed their last-ditch quest for the fame and fortune that has been so elusive to them.

ANVIL's new album, "Impact Is Imminent", will arrive on May 20 via AFM Records.

Like its three predecessors, "Anvil Is Anvil" (2016),"Pounding The Pavement" (2018) and "Legal At Last" (2019),"Impact Is Imminent" was produced by Martin "Mattes" Pfeiffer and Jörg Uken at Uken's Soundlodge studios in Germany.