Continued from page 34 ematography . It ’ s actually the first documentary ever made , and that ’ s interesting in the aspect that Anvil is [ the ] subject of a documentary . It struck home for me on that level . The photographer in the 1920s went up north and lived with the Eskimos for a number of years and filmed it all . There ’ s no talking in the film , of course in the 1920s there wasn ’ t . It tells the whole story of a family history or at least a glimpse of what people lived like in the 1920s up in the North . I was inspired by it . With the idea of it being about [ the ] Inuit and about the first nation , I looked for a tempo and a type of feel that represented that . I used a very common drum feel to create music [ for the song ]. You zero in on a subject matter and capture it musically , as well as lyrically .
Mosh : During the songwriting process for Pounding the Pavement , did you find yourself going back and listening to your older material for inspiration or did it just come naturally ? Lips : There was a period in my career in the ’ 90s where we let the influences of that day into our music , particularly the thrash aspect . And we went really super heavy with ridiculously long arrangements and ten different riffs and ten different feels going on in the song . To me , that was never natural for me . What ’ s natural to me is what we ’ ve been doing in the last four or five albums . I like songs for the sake of songs , and a riff for the sake of a riff . You shouldn ’ t be trying to be anything ; you should just be what you are . And that ’ s what I was saying - at the onset when we began talking about all of this - is that everything has to be natural . When it became unnatural , it became further off the
mark . It ’ s not about going commercial . It ’ s totally the opposite , where you become too complicated for your own fans . It ’ s not a real conscious thing that we changed . What [ we do is ] whatever I feel like , and whatever we put together is what we ’ re going to go with . Stop steering and just drive . That ’ s what we ’ ve been doing . It ’ s very natural . Writing by not trying to complicate it . Don ’ t overdo it .
Mosh : With the mainstream success of the 2008 documentary , you became relevant again in the metal world after so many years of slugging it out in relative obscurity . Lips : A lot of people misread it . It ’ s not really about the unsuccessfulness of the band ; it ’ s actually quite the opposite . People get a laugh out of it in the sense that I rattled off 12 albums , it ’ s not like we were sitting around doing nothing all those years . We were putting out records and doing the best we could under the circumstances . The fact is , I ’ ve done what I ’ ve wanted to do , the way I ’ ve wanted to do it , and when I ’ ve wanted to do it my entire career . Along comes a guy from my past ( Sasha Gervasi ) and [ he ] makes a movie and brings me into the mainstream , rebooting my career beyond where it was even at the beginning . I ’ m making a living [ now ] where I never have in all my 40 years of doing this . My whole idea when I put the band together with Robb in the ’ 70s , when we first started as kids , [ was ] we ’ re going to put a heavy band together , and we ’ re going to stay heavy till we can ’ t breathe anymore . That was the whole concept of what we were about from the very onset . And I ’ ve stayed true to that my entire career . We still have our feet firmly planted in our roots ; they ’ re not going to go away . It ’ s our signature aspect , and it ’ s just part of what we do .
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