Went and saw Anvil! The Story of Anvil with some friends tonight (including Camassia). It’s a documentary about a b-list (c-list?) 80s power metal band from Canada that never quite made it big, but never quit either. The movie was terrific and surprisingly affecting.

After the movie I consulted Ian Christe’s magisterial history of heavy metal, Sound of the Beast, and found this amusing nugget:

Power metal bands like Anvil, still dressing in red leather bondage outfits and playing guitar solos with phallus-shaped vibrators, felt the chance for mass popularity slipping through their fingers. They had paid their dues and paved the way for Metallica, but were lost now in the wake of dozens of faster bands. There had been an instant years earlier when Lars Ulrich bragged that his band would someday be bigger than Anvil…. (p. 136)

Here’s “School Love” from Tokyo in 1984, at a rock festival they played with Bon Jovi and the Scorpions, among others, and which seemed to be the peak of their career: