Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) is a music documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Sacha Gervasi. At fourteen, best friends Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner swore to play heavy metal together forever. Forty years later, they are still at it — and still completely unknown to most of the world.

In the early 1980s, Anvil shared stages with the bands that went on to define the genre. Lars Ulrich, Scott Ian, Slash, and Lemmy all appear on camera to say the same thing: Anvil were there first, and somehow the world just missed them. The film follows Lips and Robb through a catastrophic European tour and into the recording of their thirteenth studio album, self-funded and made in someone's basement with no label interest and no guarantee anyone will listen.

Gervasi, a childhood Anvil fan, made something that defies easy framing — it is frequently funny and genuinely moving, and it refuses to make the men look foolish even as the setbacks pile up. The real subject is what keeps someone going when the break never arrives. Stream Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) on iFILM.