11/27/2023 0 Comments Motorhead overkill(When asked why he put the umlauts over Motörhead’s name, Lemmy said, “I thought it looked mean.”) In the box, there’s March 1979’s Overkill, the band’s most perfect single LP, in all its sleazy, knuckleheaded glory, and its slower, scuzzier sister, that October’s Bomber, which showed that three musicians could play as heavy as any larger-sized band. The highlights of Motörhead’s Year of Radical Thinking now comprise a new box set, 1979, which is a smart title since Lemmy would’ve wanted it plain and raw. In another time and another land, Lemmy would have been an outlaw country hero, a folk legend, but in London at the dawn of Thatcherism, he was a drug-fueled heavy-metal prophet. The lyrics ranged from lubricious (“Damage Case”) to ludicrous (“Over the Top”), and yet Lemmy was also the king of metal maxims: “The only way to feel the noise is when it’s good and loud” (“Overkill”), “The only proof of what you are is in the way you see the truth” (“Stay Clean”), “Dead men tell no tales” (“Dead Men Tell No Tales”). It was the best of metal, punk, and Capital-R Rock & Roll sledgehammered into half-hour wallops. The two records they put out that year, Overkill and Bomber, smacked of gritty, unpredictable, throbbing riffs and frontman Lemmy Kilmister sounded as if he had been huffing macadam and was coughing it up kernel by kernel. ![]() Just 'Cos You Got The Power might just be the best example of Lemmy's cutting lyrical ability - unambiguously fighting back against oppression and corruption.In 1979, Motörhead became the one band headbangers and punks could agree upon. ![]() even drafting in Slash to play the song with them at Download Festival 2010. Released as a b-side to the similarly apoplectic Eat The Rich, the song is a showcase of how well the dual-guitar set-up worked for Motorhead (for a time at least) and became a live staple in future years, Lem and co. ![]() Just 'Cos You Got The Power is a massive subversion of that formula Lemmy's usual bellow drips with a venom that is reflected in the song's lyrical content (' You might be a financial wizard with a sack of loot/But all I see is a slimy lizard with an expensive suit'), but is accompanied by a steady, marching pace that gives then-guitarists Phil Campbell and Wurzel plenty of space to strut their stuff. Many of Motorhead's angriest songs come with a proto-thrash forcefulness that makes it feel like the band are hitting you at 120mph with a freight-train. Just 'Cos You Got The Power (Eat The Rich, 1987) ![]() That said, Iron Horse/Born To Lose is a fascinating mid-point between the spacy compositions Lemmy had been working on with Hawkwind and the serpentine grooves that slipped into early Motorhead records, the band steadily finding their own niche.Ĩ. As such, many of its songs were re-recorded by the 'classic trip' line-up of the band (Lemmy, Taylor, 'Fast' Eddie Clarke) for their 1977 debut and, although heavier, its songs still lacked the power and urgency that would define Motorhead going forward. but they weren't quite there when the earliest line-up of Motorhead - featuring Larry Wallis and Lucas Fox alongside classic Motorhead drummer 'Philthy Animal' Taylor - recorded their first album in 1976.Ĭobbled together mostly from songs Wallis and Lemmy had written with their respective former bands, On Parole ended up languishing on the shelf until 1979 (coincidentally around the same time the band was taking off - funny that). When Lemmy was fired from prog cosmonauts Hawkwind in 1975, he set out to create the world's greasiest rock'n'roll band. Iron Horse/Born To Lose (Motorhead, 1977)
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