Anvil
Today I feel I need to brush on the topic of documentaries about head banging heavy metal music. Bear with me especially if you are not a fan of this type of music.
I’m sure that unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve no doubt seen Rob Reiner’s 1984 ”mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap. It was the funny story about a metal band that always skirted real fame and fortune. This film showed a lot of heart and soul and the conflict between members that had a vision and talent, but they just couldn’t connect with the masses. The funny thing about Tap was a lot of Metal Bands thought the film was about them, and often I guess it was; it was about them all.
The next film was the 2004 documentary, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. This film also showed the heart and soul and the conflict between members of a successful metal band. This film had a lot of similarities to the fictional Spinal Tap film. Some were intentional, and some not.
There is a real Metal Band out there that pretty much wrote the book on Metal. Oddly they never really made it, but after 30 years they are still working on it. This group is the real Spinal Tap. They are a Canadian group called Anvil. Please go out and rent the film, Anvil: The Story of Anvil. If you ever root for the under-dog, this is film is for you. Included in this documentary are interviews with Slash of Guns and Roses, Lemmy of Motorhead and Lars Ulrich of Metalica among others. The interviewees all sing the praises of Anvil yet none of them seem to understand why they never became the Beatles of Metal.
I am not a Metal-head by any means, but I found this film so touching because of their drive and sincerity that I want to buy their entire album collection, even if I’ll never listen to any of them.
Please visit this site to see the movie trailer.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
6 Comments:
For a moment there, I thought I was getting spoofed again. With a guy named Robb Reiner in the group. Looks like a pretty good story, tho. Kind of like an underdog version of "Rock Star". I'll check it out.
Maybe they will be as well known as The Rutles
the greatest metal band of all time
http://satanicide.com/
Darev, I caught that, too. There were two references in the film that came from Spinal Tap.
Auntie, I had that record. It was really good.
Anon, they may be the best metal band, but they have the worst website of all time.
That looked bad enough to be another spoof site. Like they looked up the definition of "campy" and said "Hey, we can do this!"
Thanks for the review - I'm somewhat of a metalhead. Love Motorhead, Guns and Roses, Iron Maiden, and Queensryche.
Post a Comment
<< Home