Nostalgia aside this is one of those albums you have to hear, its impact on the development of thrash metal is beyond dispute.
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The title track, a signature tune of massive import, will hit the charts while the parent album soars to number 4 in the UK and there are TV appearances on Top of the Pops, and bizarrely, the kids show Tiswas. While the terrain starts to shift they emerge with the classic Ace Of Spades, produced by Vic Maile in less than three weeks, summer 1980.
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Again the reissue is a double-CD affair that is perfect for rediscovery.īy now the Lemmy effect is in full flow and the band prove adept at bossing then destroying theatres with a look and sound that is every bit as vital as anything in the hip punk world. The groundswell of good reviews continue with Bomber (1979), an entirely in-house project that contains the legendary tracks “Lawman” and “All The Aces”, autobiographical in content, and the Len Deighton-inspired title track. Going out under the banner “Achtung! This Band Takes No Prisoners” the rejuvenated ‘head changed production, subbing Speedy Keen for Jimmy Miller to create Overkill with its stand out cuts “No Class” and “Metropolis” studding a rough and ready collection that easily passes muster four decades later. Motörhead’s hardcore attitude meant they avoided being cast into the dinosaur pit however and the album is well worth another look today since it features stalwarts from their live set like “Lost Johnny” and the thrashy “White Line Fever”.
The salvation of a sort arrived via Chiswick Records – a feisty independent who gave them studio time and the debut single and album, both called Motörhead hit the racks in summer of ’77 while all around them was punk. Even so, the classic Motörhead line-up didn’t hit plastic until Stiff released the “Leaving Here” single while the band actually considered packing it in. That remained unreleased until 1979 when it appeared as On Parole, and mighty fine it was too. Phil “Philthy Animal” replaced Fox and a would-be debut was recorded at Rockfield in Wales with Dave Edmunds. Having practiced their act in a disused furniture store in Chelsea, close by Lemmy’s latterday home on a moored Thames barge, the trio format was established and they supported Greenslade and the Blue Oyster Cult on early dates in 1975 before Andrew Lauder signed them to United Artists. Citing a desire to be fast, raucous and arrogant, with a side order of paranoia and speed freak rocking overkill, Lemmy enlisted Larry Wallis (ex-Pink Fairies) to add electric guitar lines to his bass while the original drum seat was taken by Lucas Fox. Lemmy formed Motörhead in the aftermath of his departure from Hawkwind, the progressive acid speed drone rockers whose “Silver Machine” characterised the era of patchouli oil-soaked headbanging. They are not a guilty pleasure, they are a force to be reckoned with: warts and all exemplum of metallic majesty. Roots in old-school rock and roll are at their bedrock but they can do subtle too and if they’re deadly serious and seriously deadly they are also smarter than the average metal act, hence the fact they’ve sold more than 15 million albums worldwide and show no signs of slowing down.
But while they have a certain beastly quality Lemmy and co. Their classic albums include Overkill, Bomber, the must-have Ace Of Spades and the genre-defining No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith (a reference to their many appearances at the old Odeon and their habit of staying up rather later than is generally considered sensible) are all within our remit here, as are the majority of Motörhead’s ball-busting epics. Add all that to their distinctive logo, a fanged boar’s tusk decorated biker emblem (familiar to insiders as ‘War-Pig’ or ‘Snaggletooth’) and you have a band that matches content to imagery. Their ear-shattering array of studio, live and compilation albums are revered by fanatics for attention to sonic detail, speed punk riffs and lyrics that function like some kind of Viking Armageddon allied to a noise that might be compared to a neutron bomb. Listen carefully: you can still hear the sound resonating from his trusty old amp, nicknamed “Murder One”. His sad death, on 28 December 2015, four months after the release of their final studio album, Bad Magic, signalled the immediate announcement that the band would split, though the brand lives on. The quintessential English rock band and trailblazers in the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, the mighty Motörhead are an institution, a national treasure, even, certainly in the case of founding member Ian Fraser Kilmister, known to us all as Lemmy.
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