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ANVIL
One And Only

AFM (2024)
Rating: 4.5/10

Long before primitive man and long after the planet has disappeared up its own sorry arse, Anvil exist. They walked the earth with the dinosaurs, and after the apocalypse strikes they will stride from the debris. Anvil doesn’t give a shit, it’s a band that has no time for trends, a band that sees no reason to change, and like AC/DC and Motörhead they have, although to a lesser extent, cemented their place in rock history.

Anvil has been worshipped, panned, slammed, slaughtered and idolized. Buried, resurrected, forgotten and regenerated, the Canadian band ploughs on with album number 300, and what is there left to say that hasn’t been said before? In fact, my words would have been recycled more than an Anvil riff.

As expected, this basic yet tried and tested formula will no doubt please the die-hard fans and it’s you who would be the fool to expect anything other than what we know, and occasionally love about the veterans. The songs are simple and sometimes catchy, the lyrics are dumb and yet Anvil is very much the Status Quo of the metal world. They plod along like an old donkey, weather beaten yet happy to be a creature of habit.

The opening title track kicks in, the chords are familiar but then again so are a majority of the choruses on the album. It all just rings of stagnancy, and yet Anvil still remain worshipped. It could be argued that’s simply because they were around “back then”. Sure, the early albums were decent, but over time I can see why the band seemed frazzled. It wasn’t because they became underrated or off trend, but because they weren’t good enough, and with One And Only it’s the same old story.

Yep, there are a few decent songs – ‘Condemned Liberty’ bulges with riffage and there’s grit with ‘Dead Man Shoes’ – but I just can’t throw accolades at such an outing because of its mediocrity. Twenty albums in and here we are showered on the bland plods of ‘Rocking The World’ and the dreadful teenage slop of ‘Feed Your Fantasy’, the same could be said for ‘Heartbroken’. It’s kind of sad that Anvil is given some sort of sympathy vote when the reality is that this is just a poor album.

Neil Arnold

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