Description

Original Canadian 1988 cassette. Cut out in spine

‘…your mouth is bigger than a two car garage…’

The last recording to feature the original Anvil line-up, Pound For Pound continued the group’s creative descent into cartoonish anthem-metal that eroded the group’s once-strong following. After leaving their original label home, business concerns apparently stalled Anvil’s recording career, and judging by this disc and its predecessor, 1987’s Strength of Steel, perhaps these problems might also have negatively impacted the group’s material. No matter the cause, Pound for Pound is a clearly inferior effort compared to early records like the near-classic Metal on Metal. Vocalist, guitarist, and band leader Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow is joined by the same players who helped him create the superior early work (guitarist Dave Allison, drummer Rob Reiner, and bassist Ian Dickson), but ‘Pound For Pound’ really can’t be called the band’s finest or mightiest release but at the time it was considered a return to form after ‘Strength Of Steel’. However aside from a couple of weak high-heeled tracks they’ve conceived over the years, Anvil’s songwriting has always been pretty strong (even if some of the lyrics leave a bit to be desired). Having entered speed metal bliss as early as 1982, Anvil bent speed barriers even more shamelessly and came as close to thrash you can possibly get with ‘Forged in Fire’, and while none of these noels can ravage train tracks like ‘Motormount’ or ‘Butter Bust Jerky’, these curb-jumpers are more rhythmically bantered, a bit more fleshed out, and still a little loosely-harnessed. ‘Corporate Preacher’ is another slam on TV Evangelists and ‘Toe Jam’ is another Anvil porn song. The track that would survive the best of the years is the brutal ice hockey anthem ‘Blood on the Ice’.

Track listing:
1. Blood On The Ice
2. Corporate Preacher
3. Toe Jam
4. Safe Sex
5. Where Does All The Money Go?
6. Brain Burn
7. Senile King
8. Machine Gun
9. Fire In The Night