No one was more surprised by the idea of making a documentary on obscure Canadian heavy metal band Anvil than Anvil’s drummer himself, ROBB REINER. "I thought it was a cool idea, but I thought ‘why us? Nobody knows who we are’," he recalls. KELLY GRIFFIN finds out more from Reiner and SACHA GERVASI, director of ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL.

New bro-comedy / documentary, Anvil: The Story Of Anvil, is not a film about two hot-shot rock stars in their prime; it’s a story of two wide-eyed 50-something year-old men still hanging on to that elusive 14 year-old dream of one day making it big in the music scene and rocking-out on the international stage. The irony of it all is that through this documentary they’ve achieved just that.

‘Anvil: The Future of Heavy Metal’ was splashed across the cover of SOUNDS magazine in April 1982, coinciding with the release of the band’s seminal album Metal On Metal, one of the heaviest albums in metal history, which influenced some of the greatest bands in that genre – Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax among others.

"I heard the album in about May or June, I was 15," recalls Sacha Gervasi, director of Anvil: The Story of Anvil. "I started listening to it and it was just fucking mind-blowing … They were really, really fast, they were fast in a way that you hadn’t really heard before. The musicianship was pretty first rate … so I went to see them play and they were actually better live than on the record. I was blown away. I wanted to meet them," he gushes. As any fearless, music-loving kid would do, or at least attempt, Gervasi bluffed his way backstage and met these metal "demigods" that night.

"We met [Gervasi] in England," affirms Reiner. "He came to a gig, he was a fan of the band, he befriended me, he’s a drummer, I’m a drummer, and we recognised him instantly to be this cool dude, so we came to be friends," he explains. Anvil then invited Gervasi to be a roadie on their Canadian tour, Gervasi accepted and, as Reiner enthuses, they "gave him the time of his life".

"It was right in the middle of probably their hottest moment," Gervasi adds, but strangely, that "hot moment didn’t transform into anything." The band soon plummeted into obscurity and Gervasi himself eventually lost touch with Anvil.

It wasn’t until some twenty years later that Gervasi discovered the band still existed; despite all odds, they were still making music, still playing gigs, albeit to a very small crowd, they were working crappy day jobs to make ends meet, but, with enduring optimism, they were still chasing that childhood dream.

"I was reminded that they existed and I wanted to reconnect with [lead vocalist and guitarist] Lips. It was actually just because of that reconnection with him and [seeing] that he was still the way he was, still had the same winning attitude," that Gervasi, who was now working as a top scriptwriter in Hollywood (The Big Tease, The Terminal), decided their’s was a story worth being told.

"I think Lips and Reiner were keen to expose the truth of what it means to be successful musicians," Gervasi offers, adding that the band trusted him with their story due their friendship forged so many years ago. "The band is still somewhat in repute within metal [circles] but the reality is they had fuck all money and it’s been a real struggle for them. The point [of the documentary] was to really smash the myth not only of stereotypical heavy metal musicians, but also what it means to be a name band."

And the truth, it ain’t pretty. In Anvil: The Story of Anvil we see the band truly at rock bottom. We see them struggling desperately for a record deal, doing it tough to provide for their families, and embarking on a European tour that goes horribly, horribly wrong: at one point they play at a 20,000-capacity venue but only 174 people turn up. Scenes such as these have led reviewers to associate Anvil: The Story of Anvil with classic 1984 rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap – but this film isn’t a joke, it’s a reality, which is where the poignancy of it lies.

"The great joy of what’s happened is that the film has completely brought attention to them…" says Gervasi. "It’s one of those things where people are being introduced to them for the first time. Largely because of the film, people are falling in love with them, then going and checking out their music."

Since the film’s debut at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival followed by its theatrical release in America last year, Anvil’s world has finally taken a turn for the better. "Everything has changed," says Reiner. "Every single thing we could imagine has changed. We have a manager, we have an agent, we have a record company, we’re doing big shows. We just finished doing shows with AC/DC, I mean I don’t think it’s going to get bigger than that. We don’t have our day jobs no more, we have musical equipment endorsements, we’re making money, it’s all good."

"As Lips says, ’it’s like we’re living the dream, man’," chimes Yeldham. "The film is the gift that just keeps on giving to them…"

ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL opens in cinemas Thursday Sep 10. Anvil play Soundwave on Saturday Feb 20, 2010, and their thirteenth album, This Is Thirteen, is out Sep 4 through Mushroom. www.anvilthemovie.com

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