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Anvil has been very productive since their renaissance courtesy of the Anvil: The Story of Anvil documentary back in 2009. Impact Is Imminent is their sixth album since then and their nineteenth overall. If you’ve followed them at all, you’ll know they’ve settled into a groove, releasing roughly the same modern-sounding Anvil records such as Anvil Is Anvil and Pounding the Pavement, each with the signature Anvil DNA but perhaps more hard rock sensibilities than their early classics. There’s nothing wrong with them, but on this new one, they’ve more fully embraced their roots than they did on the last one, Legal at Last, which is a damn good record, and come up with something that might just be better.

Albums like Metal on Metal and Forged in Fire established their mix of slower, rumbling tracks that pound your eardrums like, well, a hammer on an anvil, and faster cuts where Lips lets loose with copious leads and Robb Reiner rolls the drums over you like a stampede of wildebeest. On Impact Is Imminent you can soak in the heavy thunder of "Take a Lesson" and "Shockwave" and go for a joyride of sweet licks and drum rolls on "Ghost Shadow" and "Fire Rain." There are a few rather pointless instrumentals ("Teabag," "Gomez") that the album would have been better off without, but the songs otherwise range from good to excellent. Nothing will ever equal Metal on Metal or Forged in Fire as they were a product of their time and nothing like them had been heard before, but is sure is nice to hear Anvil going back to their roots and kicking ass.