No metal band, and possibly no band in the history of bands, has had a career as labyrinthine as that of Anvil. One day in the late ’70s, a high school kid named Steve Kudlow happened to hear classmate Robb Reiner drumming in his Toronto home; Kudlow introduced himself, and the two built a fast, loud, punishing machine, called it Anvil and made a string of albums containing anthems such as “Metal On Metal” and “666.” They kept at it for years, decades, never achieving anything close to the fame of successors, from Guns N’ Roses to Metallica, laboring obscurely into their 50s.
“The fact that we’re still here is almost its own energy, man,” Reiner would say.
Then a former roadie, filmmaker Sacha Gervasi, set out to capture how tragic their lives had become: By 2008, Kudlow, the fast-talking singer known as “Lips,” and Reiner, a steady, silent type, were working menial jobs in Toronto and taking sizable loans from family members to support their recording projects. Gervasi’s documentary, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” became a cult hit, a sort of real-life version of “This Is Spinal Tap” with more appealing characters and real emotions, and Anvil soon became truly famous.
“This year has been probably the busiest year in our entire career, and here we are, eight years after the movie. The 15 minutes (of fame) has definitely long dissipated, but what has helped it sustain is the fact that Anvil is actually a good band,” Kudlow says in a half-hour phone interview from a touring break somewhere in New Jersey. “If the movie had existed, and we weren’t a good band, it would have been over after a year, if that.
“We learned a very early and very brutal lesson in our younger years — you don’t let up, ever. You keep the tank full and you keep driving it. You don’t stop. ‘Cause stopping means that you’re gonna slip,” continues Kudlow, 58, who’s also the lead guitarist. “So we’ve been on this survival-terror mode to keep it going.”
Most of the phone interview focuses on Anvil’s music, particularly the interplay between Kudlow and Reiner, unique among metal bands. “We have really the same musical vocabulary,” Kudlow says. “I’m really a guitar player that loves drumming.
“That’s what Anvil is, it’s about the combination of guitar-playing and drumming. That’s why we’re doing things like playing 16th and 32nd notes with the guitar and the drums, things that no one had done previously, and that’s where people go, ‘Hey, man, you discovered speed metal!’ Well, it’s not speed metal from our perspective. It’s more like, ‘Oh, this is really interesting now, what if I go really fast picking this thing and you follow with the kick-drums?’ It was more about experimentation — ‘let’s try this.'”
This leads Kudlow, in his stream-of-consciousness patter familiar to “Anvil!” fans, into an enthusiastic discussion of the history of rock, metal and jazz drumming, his favorite and least favorite drummers and a conclusion that “most people do not know what good drumming is.” At one point he flashes a temper that occasionally came out in the film, when briefly dressing down his interviewer for not having heard of Vinny Appice. “You don’t know,” he asked, stopping conversation, “the drummer who played with Black Sabbath?”
But mostly, the long-and-frizzy-haired Kudlow plays the amiable, regular-guy frontman seen throughout the movie, the one who wore an absurd-looking bondage harness onstage and plays slide guitar using a sex toy. (“I used to use just a very standard one that turned off and on,” he says. “But as time went on, I discovered that they make them with variable speeds.”)
Influenced by the hard rock, crass sexual humor and even the logos of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, Anvil prepared for superstardom in the Monsters of Rock era, putting out strong albums like “Hard N’ Heavy” and “Backwaxed.” But despite opening for Motorhead and Maiden, Anvil stalled in a morass of bad record deals.
“We didn’t make money from royalties at any point, and any (financial) results that we ever had are results completely stemming from playing live,” Kudlow says.
“Anvil!” wasn’t a Hollywood blockbuster, but it developed a large enough cult following to sustain the band’s career on the road. The band has put out its 14th and 15th albums since then, including 2013’s more-of-the-same “Hope In Hell,” and has written No. 16. But mostly, like every other working hard-rock band, Anvil tours. (The band was a quartet for most of its history, but has dropped to a trio, including bassist Sal Italiano.)
“I live for this. This is all I ever wanted to do,” Kudlow says. “We don’t like sitting around. That’s the worst f—— thing you can do. Being on the road is the way you feel most productive. Not only that, we’re getting more famous. I’m making a living. I’m still working on my first million, just like everybody else, but at least I am.”
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When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Red Line Tap, 7006 N. Glenwood Ave.
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Tickets: $15-18; 773-274-5463 or redlinetap.com