Anvil Releases New Video

The guys in Anvil have been quiet lately, but now they're back with a new video for their single "Eat Your Words." The song is from the album Hope In Hell. Astoundingly, the album only sold like 800 copies the first week of release. I'm always amazed at sales reports for bands these days. Mad props to bands who keep going, despite illegal downloading and all the rest.

View on YouTube

Comments

[Bryon]

Cool song!

[Dj]

Anvil and Pentagram I learned about through the documentaries I watched. These guys rule. I might catch em when they come to my town, because I saw Pentagram and they just tore it up. This is as metal as it gets.

[Jack]

Unfortunately for them after about two years in the spotlight from the documentary everyone went back to not caring anymore. the album that came before this/right after documentary, Juggernaught of Justice, was really good, better than this one from what I heard of it (bought JOJ, not this though).

[Him]

Dj is right to suggest (at least by implication) both documentaries. Interesting peeks behind the tattered curtains that obscure bands that never quite made it. Gervasi and Argott/Fenton deserve praise for their direction in both cases. But I wonder if the two bands are comparable in other ways.

Anvil obviously inspired other bands. No argument there (though one can point out that the degree to which they inspired other bands and why they inspired them are somewhat obscured in the documentary). But I wonder if people avoid stating the seemingly (at least to me) obvious: they were/are a band that is stuck in a time warp with very limited range. Fun? Sure, who doesn't at least grin, the first time perhaps, when Lips does his "Steely Dan Slide Guitar" schtick. But they never seemed more than surface to me. And I think a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon with them because their story was such an inspiring one (at least on a couple of levels). I mean, I like Kick Axe after all. So there is no slagging on our friends to the North or on "good time" music. But, even there, I think Kick Axe deserved more of a shot than Anvil did . . . but someone who truly cared about Anvil filmed them in a very sympathetic way. And it caught the public's attention, in no small part because VH1 threw it substantial enough media muscle behind the project.

Pentagram seems to be a different beast entirely. Liebling, plain and simple, crap-canned any chance that they had to achieve anything with his drug abuse and mental problems. They actually had a chance to record an album that would have gotten them at least a shot at the big time. But he blew it. To me (and I realize they aren't apples to apples), Pentagram had more talent and wasted more of it because of Liebling.

Another point: both films clearly operated in the realm of hagiography. But _Anvil: The Story of Anvil_ was an easier sell because it seems as if Anvil--and I mean Lips and Reiner--are generally nice fellows for whom you would root. The Pentagram film, in contrast, couldn't hide just how pathetic Liebling was (and seems, is) or how sad it was that people still circled him looking for scraps or enabled him when it was exactly the opposite sort of support he needed.

Currently, Pentagram is riding the wave that Anvil did a few years back. But the constant line-up changes suggest, more than Anvil's losing long-time bassist Gyorffy, that the fall back to Earth might be more dramatic for Pentagram and more in keeping with the world from which _Last Days Here_ seemingly afforded an escape. It doesn't look like VH1, or any other comparable organization is going to step in, and none did even when the film was released in 2011.

So I guess you pick your poison: nice guys with limited skill or a talented guy who couldn't hold it together. Not that I would wish either band ill. I just think the latter tale is the sadder one because more was lost that didn't have to be.