Anvil
Hope In Hell

January 2014
Released: 2013, The End
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Helias Papadopoulos

Anvil is a band that is gonna live forever! They are like Motorhead, live forever and keep releasing new albums! They play loud in power chords. Before anyone is going to blame the album for any absence of inspiration and innovation, let’s consider of their ages and albums. These Anvils have nothing to do more to testify of who they are.



Fuelled by the pure creation of true heavy metal, Anvil won’t give up their dream and vision of playing the music we love as AC/DC, Saxon, Motorhead and Judas Priest did. HOPE IN HELL is a wonderful throwback to the early hard rock and heavy metal era. And this makes sense as Anvil have been forged of the same 70’s and and 80’s steel as the above acts. This is their own “call of duty”.



The opener title track is heavy, sludgy, slow and completely evil as their 1982’s 'Metal On Metal' track. Things speed up with ‘Eat Your Words’, which reminds me a bit of ‘Ace of Spades’ as far as the vocal melody concerns. The third track of the album ‘Through With You’ has a Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’ touch, but who cares. It’s a brilliant song. ‘Time Shows No Mercy’ to everybody but not to Anvil. This is a song that Lips' solos are surprisingly tasteful throughout. The songs on HOPE IN HELL are typical fare for Anvil, although given that they've been raising families for some time now, they don't have one tenth of the sexual decadence of older songs like "Jackhammer".



The band bust out a seven minute epic to cap it all off, which isn't bad in its own right, but it's overshadowed by the closer. For whatever reason, the band tacked on a throwaway which is an absolute heavy metal act with blaring horns as the heavy metal legion s demand. The guitars are grinding, the vocals are extremely kicking, the whole album is not particularly unique or innovative, but it is the best 15th heavy album that many bands would like to unleash. To sum up, there is only one sentence that can describe exactly what all the fuss is about;

The flame of youth will blaze, live the thrill, and metal will never die