Only the meanest of spirits could begrudge Anvil the steady and highly productive career they’ve enjoyed since that film.
What is particularly gratifying is to hear just how much the band are still enjoying themselves. Impact Is Imminent is their nineteenth studio album and it’s just as thunderous, goofy and impishly diverse as the best of its predecessors, with frontman Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow on particularly fine form, both as a guitarist and as one of the few men alive who could sing a song titled Teabag with something approximating a straight face.
As ever, the highlights prove what an unashamedly ripping metal band Anvil can be: Ghost Shadow and Fire Rain are fiery, gas-guzzling hard-rock anthems, Shockwave is Anvil in grubby garage-doom mode and Wizard’s Wand is as silly and irresistible as its title suggests.
That album title definitely belongs to Exodus, however.
