Anvil's Lips no fan of modern metal

Anvil frontman Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow says modern metal is lacking in melody and is often performed by “non-talented” artists.

The outspoken singer believes his band’s brand of old-school metal has died out in America and has been replaced by “un-musical” noise.

Lips tells Classic Rock’s Dave Ling: “Sad to say that, in America at least, it’s become virtually non-existent. That really distresses me. A lot of metal is extraordinary in a technical sense but just so un-musical that you can barely listen to it. It’s a guy yelling and screaming into a microphone with no sense of melody. It’s just noise.

“The songs are so fast, they’re just one or two beats, changing time signatures all over the place – you can’t follow a damned thing.”

As well as the overly-technical aspect to the songs, the tendency for vocalists to scream rather than sing also grates with Lips.

He adds: “It seems that finding a real singer has become almost impossible, so what’s happened is that bands just have someone who yells and is good at talking to an audience. It’s opened the doors for people who are non-talented.

“For me, music has to have a rhythm with a melody. Without that, it’s not music.”

Lips previously said that Kiss star Gene Simmons’ claim that ‘rock is dead’ might not have been far wide of the mark.

Read the full Anvil interview in the next issue of Classic Rock, which is available from June 17.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.