Artist: Motörhead
Label: SPV Records
Released: 2006
Hey hey! How do the new Motorhead sound? Love ’em or hate ’em! The corpse has come back to life and it roars like someone cracking open a 10,000-year-old sarcophagus, the stone lid grinding aside as a badly chewed-up hand (a bite mark, as the boys would say), riddled with worm tunnels, creeps out first and the joints of a rusty spine creak… Well, the kiss of death brings a new resurrection too! Our good old friend “Lemmy” and the other two Motor-noggins invite the listener to open the new album by “sucking it” (chorus: “SUCKER!!!”).
Anyone who loves Motorhead will get what they’re looking for this time too. I’m going to repeat myself again. There’s really not much to say here, nobody needs a special introduction. But still, a little pep talk! Motorhead are better today than ever! If anyone thinks otherwise, they can square off with me on the RockLine forum anytime they like! The sound is unique, it destroys, it brings walls down and slices concrete into thin rock n’ roll slivers with brute force! No point philosophizing. Mikkey’s unstoppable rolling, the venomous tightening of the double bass pedal, Campbell’s classic rock n’ roll riffs, they’re mega-incinerating huge this time too, and the chancellor rattles away on his Rickenbacker like always, gravelly as hell, once again strictly legit in the role of an equal rhythm guitar, firing off riff-chopping through the cheeky jangling of fifths. On top of that, “Kiss Of Death” proves that in their old age Motorhead are bringing more melody into their sound than ever (yes, you heard right. Melody!!!), which proves that the old boys’ hearts are going soft with age after all. The biggest surprise is the three-part harmonies in Trigger – a nod to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal of the eighties, and when you hear that coming from the hands of the “motor heads”, your mouth spreads into a grin all by itself (at the very least)! Lately every Motorhead record has at least one track you can break your legs trying to dance to. The original of that invention is called Sacrifice and it’s ten years old, and its counterpart on “Kiss Of Death” is, this time, just an innocent warm-up and the opener Under The Gun, but stuff in the same vein turns chillingly serious in its extreme version when the chancellor and company head off to the “kingdom of the worm” (Kingdom Of The Worm), which is Sacrifice crossed with Orgasmatron, and the “old shack” roars like death in all its horrifying shape, or like the hungriest creature of the wildest human imagination, thirsty for blood and tribute, seeing only dust and ashes in front of it. Reality is hard and knows no beauty. If anyone knows the law of the street and brings it to life convincingly through their sermon in the rawest, most arrogant way, it’s surely (still today) Lemmy! Halfway through, the new record is split by the half-acoustic, hard-hitting ballad God Was Never On Your Side, which follows in the tradition of the Motorhead classic I Ain’t No Nice Guy and reminds you that the “bastard” Lemmy is one seriously “romantic” soul – though not in the lyrics (see the title), so this is a real (!!!) power ballad! And, to put it in plain Lemmy terms, this moment of the record is probably the gentle “Beatles” side of his view of the rock world. Remember the ballad Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me? And for the classic rock’n’roll firebrands, the Motor-boys hit the road with Christine (how does Born To Raise Hell go again?)! That Lemmy loves the history of both World Wars of our recent past, he wrote down once more in the dedication of the song Sword And Glory, yet another of his most typical classic Motorhead legacies!
Lemmy can’t even picture himself dancing between the knives of his rock n’roll beats at seventy, but there’s no other way. He’ll stop playing only when a skeletal auntie comes to fetch him on stage: “Come with me, let’s hit the road, you’ll play a bit for the devils down there, you know they’ve been missing you endlessly, you’ve been mortal long enough. But if you beat me fair and square in a game of chess before we set off from here to eternity, you can come back. Just don’t forget, you’ll never find whiskey like they brew down there, or girls who’ll dance naked on your tables!” This music just spins a person around on their feet all by itself! Even if you’re not a “Motorhead” fan, after the “Kiss Of Death” tornado hits you, you’ll at least have to smooth down your tousled hair before showing your face to your parents or kids again (whichever you prefer)! For Motorhead the word stop doesn’t exist. Their “rock n’ roll” is reality, it’s unstoppable power, it’s a monument. Its epic will end when Motorhead carry it off with them to the kingdom of the worm. Haven’t you picked up “Kiss Of All Deaths??!” yet, in the middle of my profound “confession”? May the kiss of all kisses kiss you passionately!
Lineup
Lemmy Kilmister – vocals, bass guitar
Phillip Campbell – guitar
Mikkey Dee – drums
Production
Cameron Webb
Tracklist
1. Sucker
2. One Night Stand
3. Devil I Know
4. Trigger
5. Under The Gun
6. God Was Never On Your Side
7. Living In The Past
8. Christine
9. Sword Of Glory
10. Be My Baby
11. Kingdom Of The Worm
12. Going Down
Album length: 44:54
