Anvil – Juggernaut of Justice

The Canadian metallers, Anvil can be characterized as one of the most influential heavy metal bands in history even though they’ve never been in the centre of attention compared to bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. Yet, they return in 2011, with their brand new album “Juggernaut Of Justice” which is their 13th album in almost 30 years of career. Things seem to have changed since their last album “This Is Thirteen” (2007) as the movie based on their history “Anvil! The Story Of Anvil” brought them to the spotlight and made them famous to metallers who hadn’t, until then, appreciated their contribution to heavy metal music. This was the thing that brought them to a new label, SPV and to the big fests across Europe and the States. Anvil, surely grabbed the oportunity that was created for them with the movie.

After these, surely, significant changes, Anvil try to gain our attention with “Juggernaut Of Justice”. Their music hasn’t changed a bit, but this cannot be taken as a bad thing, who, in the world, would want Anvil to change? It’s, once more, the good ol’ combination of heavy metal with speedy 70s hard rock. The recipe is completed with strong and heavy riffing as also with classic solo work, boosted by the excellent work of Chris Tsangarides in production, something that the band, in many statements has given a lot of credit to.

It’s an album that can appeal to any fan of classic metal, either with speedy tracks (“On Fire”, “When All Hell Breaks Loose”, “Turn It Up”) or mid tempo (“Juggernaut Of Justice”, “Conspiracy”) with the first ones gaining the majority. My only argument, comes with the fact that some tracks could have been avoided entering the album as they don’t seem to give any more credit than it already gains without them.

On the whole, Anvil seem to enjoy themselves with their work in a very good album which, however, won’t claim a position to the top5 of the year. Surely, a nice piece of work for any metalhead though.