Anvil

This is the music of hope: “Everything on the tour went completely wrong. But there was a tour for it to go wrong on.” Steve “Lips” Kudlow, lead guitarist in Anvil a band you’ve never heard of tells this story with an odd-brand optimism. In 1973 he met a friend named Robb Reiner in Toronto who owned a drum set, and they pledged to rock together until they were old. Now they are old, for heavy metal rockers anyway.

“Anvil! The Story of Anvil” chronicles the rise and fall (and fall and) of their band, through which musicians in the other two slots have come and gone but Lips and Robb have rocked on. “How many bands stay together for 30 years?” asks Slash of Guns N’ Roses in a backstage interview. “You’ve got the Stones, the Who, U2 and Anvil.” Yeah. And Anvil.

They had one moderately successful album (“Metal on Metal”), are credited as an influence by many heavy bands, had bad management, lousy record labels and were Canadian at a time (as now) when that doesn’t feel synonymous with heavy metal. “I was raised to be polite,” says Reiner after he fails at telephone hard selling.

Reiner also is seen working as part of a demolition crew. Kudrow drives a truck delivering school meals and explains the menu: Maybe lamb stew and meatloaf one day; meatloaf and pizza another; pizza and lamb stew yet another. He still burns fierce: The band will win win win the success it deserves.

There still are fans, loyal ones. One Tiziana Arrigoni from Sweden books European tours for Anvil; this was the tour that went seriously wrong. They missed trains. Couldn’t find the club in Prague. Weren’t paid. Were invited to the Monsters of Transylvania, a heavy metal event. Lips shares that the venue seats 10,000: “I hear the mayor of Transylvania is going to be there!” The audience numbers 178.

The movie, directed by Anvil fan (and “The Terminal” screenwriter) Sacha Gervasi, spends time in Toronto with Lips’ and Robb’s spouses, siblings and children. The wives are loyal but not hopeful. They are good family men. They were apparently spared the heavy metal plague of heavy drugs, though there is some weed in one shot.

Down falls they go. They get veteran producer Chris Tsangarides to record their 13th album (“our best work,” Lips says), but they have to release it themselves. One CD makes its way to Japan, and they’re invited to a Tokyo concert in a venue seating (ominously) 10,000. They play at the decidedly un-heavy-metal hour of 9:45 a.m. How many people show up?

I don’t know if their music is any good. Their fans seem to think so. The doc doesn’t show one song all the way through. But they took an oath when they were 14, and they’ve kept it all these years; at age 51, Lips knows he still has it and that Anvil will make it back on the charts. Maybe there’s hope for Susan Boyle yet.

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