Metallica. Slayer. Anthrax. The Scorpions. Even a casual fan of rock music knows that these names make up the pantheon of modern heavy metal, the bands that rose to the top and never looked back when metal swept away all before it in the 1980s.
But Anvil? Who has heard of them? Despite delivering the prototypical thrash-metal sound on their debut album and its followup ("666" and "Metal on Metal"), despite playing alongside the above-mentioned bands in the mid-'80s, the Canadian band was fated to toil in obscurity for the next 25 years, thanks to bad management and bad timing.
That might have remained the case were it not for Sacha Gervasi and his incredible documentary on the band, "Anvil — The Story Of Anvil." Gervasi, a huge fan of the band in his metalhead youth (he even roadied for them), had moved on to a Hollywood career, with his original screenplay "The Terminal" becoming a Stephen Spielberg project. Despite having other projects in the works, a chance re-connection with Anvil's singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow led Gervasi to drop everything, pick up a camera, and follow the band on the road in 2005.