By "Metal" Tim Henderson

Secretly behind-the-scenes there's been a tiny little feud between legendary Canuck metallers ANVIL and BW&BK.; Nothing too mean-spirited, really the magazine and the site sticking to our guns in terms of assessing the world of metal. Of course opinions are like assholes - we all got 'em - but over the course of their career (pre-documentary I might add) we haven't dealt too many pleasantries to the band with their output post-Forged In Fire. Sure, the odd album like Plugged In Permanent and This Is Thirteen have garnered decent marks, but a portion of Anvil's catalog has been sub-par. And this from a band that arguably has delivered two of the finest slabs of heavy metal in Canadian history. Namely the essential Metal On Metal and Forged In Fire. So, aside from receiving an email from leader Steve "Lips" Kudlow ages ago stating "I'm really pissed off at you Tim", our relationship has been polite and cordial.

At Heavy T.O. (held July 23rd-24th at Downsview Park in Toronto, Ontario) there was the ultimate stand-off! Actually no, it was time to catch up with Anvil about their new album Juggernaut Of Justice (glowing review here), playing to one of the largest crowds of their career in their hometown and of course the film, Anvil! The Story Of Anvil. But at the end of our chat Lips surprised me. Actually, at the beginning of our chat he caught me off guard. "Tim, why do you want to talk to us? You don't like us." As my iPod would attest, that's far, far from the truth. Dislike is a strong term. Disappointed is much better. A bit of a let-down that in over 25 years, Anvil hasn't come close to those first two albums. And both Metal On Metal and Forged In Fire stand proud to this day as our recent Top 30 Canadian Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Albums Of All-Time list would attest (check it out here).

"We gotta bury the hatchet," Lips said boldly to me. And I agreed … trust me, both of us are getting way too old to do battle!

"Time's past and I don't give a fuck about anything that happened," he continued. "I'm grateful for all of it. And to be really fucking honest, the things you wrote about the albums that we did, how could you help but not. When you look at the whole story and when it all was, it's a miracle we were able to get those records out to begin with, never mind how we went about doing them and what we ended up putting on them. And the environment in which they were written. We did pretty good overall, not stupendous because you can't when you don't have any support. You have no management, you have no record company, you are struggling. Hey man, there's the Big 4, then there's the rest of us!"

Check out the chat - which BW&BK; cameraman David Cardoso said was the most heart-felt and honest interview we did all weekend at Heavy T.O. - below: