There is much to amuse and admire in Anvil! The Story of Anvil, the award-winning “rockumentary” directed by Sacha Gervasi. The Canadian group’s enduring spirit of optimism in the face of a lifetime of setbacks is humbling and heartwarming. So heroic is the scale of their failure that, thanks to the film, the band are beginning to be regarded as serious contenders for the first time since the 1980s — at which point the awkward matter of their music raises its head.

Although it was rather glossed over in the film, Anvil’s brand of lewd, crude, thrash metal is always going to be a hard sell to audiences beyond the hardcore hinterland of heavy rock. But that may be about to change if this performance was anything to go by.

Racing on early, they piled into March of the Crabs, a typically fast and furious instrumental piece propelled by a martial snare beat and a colossal double-bass drum rumble. Heads shaking, sticks twirling, arms pumping, the three men threw themselves into the task with an unreserved abandon that was infectious. “Are you ready to rock?” yelled the 51-year-old singer and guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow, his face lit up with surely one of the sweetest smiles in the history of heavy rock.

In a set that ranged from early classics such as School Love from their 1981 debut album Hard ’n’ Heavy, to This Is Thirteen, the title track of their 13th album, released in 2007, Anvil proved that they were indeed born to rock and, one suspects, remain equipped to do little else. Kudlow whipped out a metal vibrator, which he used to provide a road-drill effect and then as a slide on his guitar during Mothra. And the drummer Robb Reiner weighed in with a massive drum solo in another instrumental, White Rhino, that borrowed freely from Ginger Baker’s Toad, before they finished with a mighty rendition of Metal on Metal.

While Anvil currently have the elevated profile, it was the English heavy metal group Saxon who provided the audience and whose show this actually was. This is the band from Barnsley’s 30th anniversary tour and, guess what, they have a feature-length movie — Heavy Metal Thunder — documenting 30 years of friendships and feuds, in the pipeline.

Led by the tall, blond-maned singer Biff Byford, the five-man band romped through an exhaustive set of blustery, heavy rock anthems with such deathless titles as Ride Like the Wind, Wheels of Steel and Denim and Leather. Sounding like Iron Maiden without the theatre and AC/DC without the wit, they remain the dray horses of heavy rock.

Anvil and Saxon play Leeds Academy tonight. Doors open 7pm

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