Anvil… The Rescue Rooms… Nottingham… 25:06:11…
The Juggernaut of Justice just rolled into town, Anvil’s summer tour of the UK and Europe got underway just over a week ago at the Metal Town festival in Gothenburg and finishes in London just over three weeks later after twenty shows. A rigorous schedule with barely a day off for the veteran Canadian band but a schedule the three piece masters of metal are thoroughly embracing and judging by the smiles on their faces here in Nottingham, enjoying to the maximum. The Nottingham show has been moved into the smaller venue of the rescue rooms next door to rock city due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’ so we’re told, the truth of the matter is that ticket sales are not high enough to put the band on in the main hall. I heard someone say this was a sad state of affairs, well let me tell you there was nothing sad about it, Anvil who are irregular visitors to our shores have managed to pack in around two hundred fans into an atmosphere charged concert room a testimony to the staying power of the heavy metal legends. Any one who has seen the 2008 film ‘The Story of Anvil’ will understand what I’m talking about. Anvil hit the stage with the instrumental march of the crabs a rarity these days but thirty odd years ago most metal bands chucked in an instro or two. Crabs flows smoothly into 666 both these numbers hailing from the seminal 1982 album metal on metal. Its apparent right from the get go that lead guitarist/lead singer Lips is not gonna stop grinning and gurning throughout tonight’s performance as he’s having a ball it seems. School love is next in the set list this from Anvil’s debut album 1981’s hard ‘n’ heavy while the title track off their fourteenth and latest album juggernaut of justice follows this.
The crowd are loving the show and so are the band, it’s old school heavy metal at it’s best, Lips takes great relish in playing a guitar solo using a vibrator during the classic song Mothra while Robb Reiner takes no prisoners with his drum solo in the middle of white rhino and ‘new man’ bassist Glenn Five (he’s only been in the band fifteen years) is introduced by Lips as being the best damned bass player in the world. Anther quote from Lips sums up Anvil and my life as well, ‘getting older is inevitable but growing up is optional’ you better believe it! Recalling a chance meeting with the late Ronnie James Dio some quarter of a decade after they last met the jovial Lips then aptly moves onto thumb hang Anvil’s most Sabbthy song, ‘all in the name of the cross’.
Seeming to finish off their set with metal on metal Anvil return to the stage to a riotous welcome back from the Nottingham faithful and play a two song encore of the classic jackhammer and from their latest album they finally bring the curtain down with running. So the Anvil juggernaut moves on having forged new friendships and consolidated old ones via a meet and greet after the show, the story of Anvil continues… GD.
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