Before the release of Anvil! The Story of Anvil! in theatres across the US and UK this summer, not many people, even in the metal community, had heard of Anvil despite the fact that bands like Metallica and Slayer cited them as one of the early influences on the thrash metal genre. Which is great, in a way, because if it wasn’t for this fact, this remarkable story might never have been told.

On one level, Anvil! is a documentary about the life and times of a failed metal band but only the most hardboiled cynic would see it that way. Even at its goofiest, Anvil! is a story about faith, friendship, perseverance and love that a lifetime of Art of Living classes couldn’t teach you. Anvil! follows the story of two friends, Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner who were brought together by their love for loud music in 1973 in Toronto, Canada, and decided to form a band that exploded on to the hair metal scene for a brief and blazing moment before disappearing into obscurity. The documentary opens with clips from the Super Rock Festival in Japan in 1984 that the band played at the height of their fame, sharing the stage with some of the biggest names in rock then – the Scorpions, Bon Jovi and Whitesnake. And if Anvil’s appearance at the festival was anything to go by – with Kudlow dressed in an S&M leather harness and playing the guitar with a dildo – the band was poised for mainstream success. Cut to thirty years later, where Kudlow discusses the menu for the week at a school catering facility that he works at to eke out a living. In these three decades between then and now, everything that could have gone wrong for the band, has.

Director Sacha Gervasi (whose earlier claim to fame is as the screenwriter of the Steven Spielberg directed The Terminal) is a long-time Anvil fan who worked as a roadie for the band in the Eighties. When he ran into the band in 2005, 20 years later, he saw the potential for a documentary and followed the lives of Kudlow and Reiner for two years. As he takes you through the band’s currently humdrum life you’ll find yourself celebrating with them as they get signed on to a European tour, then empathise as they turn up at shows to find out they’re playing to an audience of one, laugh till you tear up as their inept Italian manager who can barely speak English fumbles their train bookings, loses them money and brings them back home with nothing to show for their tour. What really stands out though is the band’s absolute refusal to give in to cynicism despite the constant struggle, the fights and the rejection and there is something tremendously moving about Kudlow’s childlike naivete and absolute belief that the big things are awaiting the band just around the next bend. The pathos hits hardest when you see the Kudlow remortgage his house and borrow money from his sister to record Anvil’s 13^th album with producer Chris Tsangarides (Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy) and then make the rounds of scores record labels only to be rejected at every turn. Gervasi could easily have turned their story into a mockumentary on the life of a metal musician a la This Is Spinal Tap: indeed Kudlow and Reiner are ready bait for such an idea – goofy, stupid, profound, doggedly loyal, hysterical, naïve, credulous, incredulous and sensible in turns. The film also draws eerily strange parallels with Spinal Tap (including the fact that Reiner shares his name with the Spinal Tap director Robb Reiner), except that this here is the real deal. But he recognises that under all that is a story with a big heart and he makes the band members come through the struggle as an inspiration rather than people to be pitied. By the end of the film you’ll be wiping tears of tears of mirth and heartbreak from your eyes but with a better understanding of what it is that propels bands on a lifelong quest to have their music heard.