Anvil - Impact Is Imminent (2022)

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Anvil - Impact Is Imminent (2022)

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Passion is the fuel and guitar/bass/drums are the engine for Canada-based metal icons Anvil. The trio, hailing from Toronto, didn’t only face the sunny side if life being a musician. Up and down, that followed the band for many years and made them to real heroes in heavy metal and never gave up.

Anvil always released good metal records. It was never the extraordinary that made them to a very respected metal band. It is the immense passion and the dedication for what they love to do which brought them some attention and admiration. Although it was a bumpy road for the trio, the guys never stopped living their dream.

Since few years the situation became a bit more stable and even the pandemic couldn’t hinder Lips, Robb and Chris to work on the new material. ‘Impact is Imminent’ is the title of the 19th studio album that reaches us from Ontario, Canada and might be the maturest one Anvil release so far. No doubt, records like ‘Forged in Fire’ and ‘Strength of Steel’ are great metal releases. The new longplayer though benefits from time, experience and focus.

Anvil is a band that loves to play live. Now, since the pandemic closed this door for a while there was not much more to do than working on new material. Without time pressure, Kudlow and bandmates had enough space for really putting the final dot on the ‘i’.

‘Impact is Imminent’ features everything the band stands for. There are the rock’n’roll roots that come to forefront with songs like ‘Teabag’, an instrumental that echoes the roots of the three guys. There is another instrumental on the album too, ‘Gomez’. The latter is the closer of the album and stands for fun and pure joy of life. The trio combined the typical Anvil metal sound with a horn section and the best thing is, it works really well together.

Although the guys ‘experiment’ a bit with their sound here and there, the longplayer in its entirety has all in place Anvil stands for. The fast anthems like ‘Ghost Shadow’ and ‘Bad Side of Town’ are smashing metal song. ‘Someone to Hate’ comes with an anarchical groove while ‘Lockdown’, the title says it all, is a moderate paced Anvil hymn. It is rather melodic song that shows how widely Anvil interprets metal without losing the context of what they stand for.

Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow, Robb Reiner and Chris Robertson have a stellar metal record in the starting blocks. This band plays authentic metal. They live heavy metal and are fascinated by this genre from day one. And they could maintain the passion for decades and Anvil in 2022 is at least as powerful as in the early years. Horns up.

~ markusheavymusicblog.org