So bad, it's good #1: Anvil - Strength of Steel

I love exceptionally bad music.

Music so terrible, that even if you'd TRIED to write something that bad, you couldn't come close.

In order for me to like a bad song, it has to contain a certain, unidentifiable piece of magic that makes it worse than the sum of it's parts.  Like the dark matter that astrophysicists can't measure but are sure exists, these terrible songs contain some secret, evil energy that make them so perfectly awful that they end up being good.

Wesley Willis.  Jan Terri.  Even Rebecca Black's Friday.  You could not write worse music if you'd spent a lifetime trying.

One song that has really been knocking it out of the park for me in this regard is Anvil's Strength of Steel.

You might remember Anvil.  The Canadian heavy metal band's comeback attempt was the subject of an acclaimed rockumentary in 2008, titled Anvil! The Story of Anvil.  I haven't seen it, but the trailer makes it look like a great film.

Strength of Steel is a song from their 1987 album of the same name.  It's terrible.  It's atrocious.  It sounds like it was a poem written for a grade 7 language arts class by a guy in a Black Sabbath jean jacket who, had he not failed the fifth grade three years in a row would have been in grade 10 by now.

In other words, it is totally awesome.

Check out these lyrics.  It's as if the school assignment was to come up with as many words that rhyme with "steel".  Whoever got the most words got to leave school at 3:25 instead of 3:30.  (My personal favourite line is "You've got to have a metallic meal". WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!?!)

With the strength of steel
I'll show you how I feel
All the weak will kneel
For the strength of steel

Your mind begins to reel
With the strength of steel
Makes your blood congeal
I have nothing, nothing to conceal
For the strength of steel
For the strength of steel

Only power to reveal
With the strength of steel
And a love that's real
For the strength of steel
A metallic meal

With the strength of steel
And with my approved seal
With the strength of steel
To you I make, make my appeal
For the strength of steel
You've got to have a metallic meal
Just for the love and
strength of steel
For the strength of steel

This is the only Anvil song I know.  I really should try some other stuff.  Judging from song titles from the same album, there may be some other transcendentally terrible music there.  How can song titled "Flight of the Bumble Beast" be anything but awesome?

Currently playing: Anvil - Strength of Steel
Proudly in my sixth Cola free year!