Motörhead

Reissues

They were born to raise Hell. And with nö sleep at all (on the reissues front) they’re still doing it.

In 1980, the loudest band in the world – previously dismissed by the NME as the worst band in the world – scored a famous victory when Ace Of Spades, their definitive song, blasted into the UK Top 20. In 1981, they achieved the seemingly impossible, when their cacophonous live album, No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith, went all the way to No.1. But in all of Motörhead’s golden years, 1979 was the most significant, and it is that year which provides the starting point for a major reissue campaign, with 40th anniversary deluxe editions of two seminal albums, Overkill (10) and Bomber (9), plus a mammoth box set, titled simply 1979 (10).

Overkill, the band’s second album, is arguably the greatest they ever made, and the most influential. Released on March 24, 1979, it had the classic threeman line-up, so perfectly named – Lemmy on bass and vocals, ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke on guitar and ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor on drums – creating a hard-andfast sound uniquely their own. Lemmy called it simply “rock’n’roll”, but in the album’s frenetic title track, and other bludgeoning songs such as Damage Case and No Class, there was the missing link between heavy metal and punk rock, and the inspiration for the first wave of thrash metal bands, Metallica foremost. The album also had depth in two slower, atmospheric numbers, Capricorn and Metropolis, and a mean blues in Limb From Limb.

Bomber followed Overkill by just seven months, and was Motörhead’s first Top 20 album. Its title track was a blitzkrieg befitting of its subject matter, and two other tracks would stand tall among the band’s very best: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a warning on the perils of heroin, and Stone Dead Forever, on which Fast Eddie, such an underrated guitarist, played solos of searing intensity.

The new deluxe editions of both albums come in hardbound book format on two-CD and triple-vinyl, each with a previously unreleased concert recording from the relevant tour, in which audiences were battered senseless by the trio’s relentless attack. The box set has all of this and more – notably, a bonus disc of rare tracks and outtakes, repro memorabilia and a 40-page music magazine revisiting the heady days of ’79. The box itself is designed like a black biker jacket – so very Motörhead.

It was an almighty racket they made, and a mighty legacy they left behind. Motörhead was a rock’n’roll band like no other, and it was in 1979 that a legend was born.