Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Zenith Halle / Munich / Germany
Concert date: 25.11.2011
Attendance: 4500
Ticket price: €40.00
It’s late fall again, it’s Munich again, and it’s Motorhead again! On their traditional autumn tour of Great Britain and Germany. Traditionally packed with fans and loyal supporters who’ve stuck with the band through all the years of its defiance. The tour, sarcastically dubbed the “No Album ‘Till Next Year Tour”, hints with its name that Motorhead play German stages every single year, and that new studio albums follow each other with a two-year gap. Like clockwork. Even after 36 years of rock gnawing and sheer stubbornness!
A budget-shredded November demanded extra caution in allocating personal funds, hence the tactical move of hopping aboard the bus of RockLine’s brother partner
Koncerti.net, who rustled up a surprisingly jam-packed double-decker of Slovenian Motorhead diehards. Even though the hiccups over Beatle Paul McCartney’s gig, played the same day in Bologna, Italy, weren’t easy to shake, let alone quick to settle, a show by the biggest rock n’ roll dirtbags and thoroughbred punks still “roaming” the planet, forever commanded by the one man fully entitled to the label “rock icon”, lover of rustling pound-note fivers, the Iron Chancellor Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister, is simply the proverbial yearly concert duty! If the stars are kind, that is. And this time they were, in every way.
It’s 6 PM! In front of Zenith Halle it’s already black with people, still wading in from every point of the compass toward the site of sinful rock partying! Soon something even happens where two young guys hold two bright A4 sheets high in the air with a clear “Wanted: ticket!” scrawled on them, which meant the show was sold out! Unbelievable. German loyalty to the grave! Motorhead play here every year and every year the show is apparently traditionally sold out. Last year too.
The first band to warm up the crowd was Sweden’s Graveyard. There’s no need to waste words on the fact that Scandinavians are born musicians. They’re also marked by an exceptional knack for revitalization, or, to use a slightly cruder word, aping. And in many genre spheres of music. Since revivalism is on the march again, more and more bands are turning to flirt directly with the legacy of the N.W.O.B.H.M. and 1970s heavy rock. Graveyard, in this respect, sailed off in a time machine back a few more years. Almost to the cradle of the heavy riff. They play a combination of roaring riffs slowly rolling along on the lumbering undercarriage of the drums, with typical flirting with bands like Black Sabbath and/or Pentagram, throwing in even bluesy elements, while the principle of hippie psychedelic rock is clearly expressed too. Drums in a classic setup. Bare, stripped-down minimalism. Guitars from the Gibson ES-335 and Gibson SG series in use, and the rattling classic Rickenbacker bass sound couldn’t be missing either! As convincing as it gets. The performance was at an exceptional level! A band you absolutely have to check out. Last year the Swedes Grand Magus opened for Motorhead at Zenith Halle. The doom element carries significant weight in their expression too. But where the latter head off into metal from there, Graveyard move into the psychedelic rock of the late sixties and early seventies. Graveyard played the following songs at the show (order not correct): No Good Mr. Holden, Aint’t Fit To Live Here, Hisingen Blues, Uncomftoartrbly Numb, Buying Truth, The Siren, Evil Ways. The lineup has two studio albums in its pocket, and this year Hisingen Blues came out on Nuclear Blast Records, which means Graveyard are far from cheap musical farts!
There’s no need to waste words on the activity of former members of the golden era of Guns N’ Roses. Bassist Duff McKagan has for years been seeking occasional solace and fun in his band Loaded. The band, resurrected for the third time in its career, released its third studio album this year, titled “The Taking” (2011), which followed its predecessor “Sick” (2009) after two years, meaning we’re apparently witnessing the most prolific era of Loaded’s creativity. The quartet of Duff McKagan (guitar, vocals), Mike Squires (guitar), Jeff Rouse (bass) and Isaac Carpenter (drums) served up an excellent mix of dirty rock with decisive punk connotations, which cling firmly to Duff throughout his long career, and in which it’s not hard to spot cues of stoner stoniness as well as grunge crunch. The band devoted the bulk of the set to material from “The Taking”, fired up the crowd with as many as three covers, and at the end got everybody on their feet with the expected Guns N’ Roses gem It’s So Easy. The sound was smeared, though. Especially the guitars. I could even say Graveyard sounded quite a bit better. Anyway. As expected, Loaded coaxed far more decibels of noise and ruckus back from the crowd. The band, led by McKagan’s endearingly boyish vocals, thus rode through its three-quarter-hour set without a visible flaw.
It’s nine o’clock! The hall wraps itself in darkness! Sirens wail. When the sirens wail at a Motorhead show, it’s clear that only Bomber can be coming onstage! This time the wailing of the sirens stood in for Lemmy’s traditionally theatrical greeting “We are Motorhead and we play rock n’ roll!”. The stage is wrapped in a proper moorland fog, and all that’s missing is the Hound of the Baskervilles howling a duet. A minimally equipped stage. Three meters high, the backdrop draped in black curtains. Dee’s raised drum kit and, hung high above him, the three-headed Motorhead mascot! The stillness in front of the stage is over as the band erupts into its famous rattle and the floor turns into a battlefield of wild “moshers” who’ve waited all week for the moment to completely switch off their heads before stepping up to their bosses at work on Monday morning in a tie. Energy as unique and unforgettable as ever. Something you can only experience at a Motorhead show.
A seasoned band maintains a feeling of impenetrability and inflexibility. The atmosphere that’s there every year at Zenith Halle, provided by the loyal Motorhead crowd, clearly does Lemmy and company a world of good! A skating rink of spilled beer, discarded and lost personal items, from pants and shoes to cell phones, crushed glasses and wristwatches. No brakes! War and chaos in the hall! This is the kind of show that unites, reconciles and fully brings together old rockers and milk-toothed enthusiasts!
Motorhead nicely freshened up the setlist for this tour. Right after the opening Bomber blitzkrieg, they kept their untamed, rough-and-manly punk look with the classic Damage Case, which returned to the setlist after several years. Also back in is the fearsome Orgasmatron of apocalyptic visions, while the undoubted surprises in this round of the repertoire were the songs I’ll Be Your Sister (album “Overkill”, 1979) and The One To Sing The Blues (album “1916”, 1991). What’s more! For the German leg, I’ll Be Your Sister replaced the newer song Rock Out, which Motorhead played on the British part of this tour. For the first time since 2005, songs from the Robbo-era album “Another Perfect Day” dropped out of the set entirely, while the classics Stay Clean, Over The Top and The Chase Is Better Than The Catch, alongside the obligations of the iron repertoire Mertopolis, Gong To Brasil, Iron Fist and Killed By Death, are a more than excellent addition! The performance of Killed By Death always signals that the set is nearing its end; before this song the band cranks its instruments up to an even higher loudness, Duff McKagan shuffles onto the stage with his guitar, and it’s also the song that shows most vividly how well Lemmy’s voice is still preserved. This time too the chrome-plated throat of the Iron Chancellor held out defiantly in full!
Phil and Mikkey each got a few minutes for solos, though nobody would have missed Phil’s. Phil wears a hat, which undoubtedly works in favor of the band’s polished stage look, unlike the many years when the Welsh-born guitarist walked onstage in a stretched-out beanie (a chimney sweep’s cap).
Before Metropolis, Lemmy disappeared backstage for a few moments. When he came back onstage, he hinted to the crowd that he’d had to patch up one of the fingers on his left hand. Apparently he’d cut it while playing bass.
The sleepy blues Whorehouse Blues, with Lemmy on harmonica and Mikkey on second acoustic guitar, turned in the encore into the expected hellish finish of the Ace of Spades / Overkill sequence (before that, Motorhead tuned up the guitar and bass sound once more), which squeezed the last atoms of strength out of the crowd’s overheated heads. A crazy shot straight to the forehead. All the way to the end. As far as it goes! No need to repeat that a Motorhead show, after this new Munich experience, keeps all the gleaming hallmarks of the classic tradition of primal, dirty rock n’ roll punch, built on the legacy of the magnificent charisma of three renegades. A stainless perpetuum mobile! Long after Motorhead had left us and the hall was flooded with the oscillating, shrill drone of feedback. A fundamentally primal destructiveness, as a guarantee that there’s no blissed-out hero who wouldn’t crawl away on all fours, covered in bruises, at the end of facing it, while vowing to come back very soon for another dose of bruises and scrapes!
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Transport into the bosom of an always safe and pleasant atmosphere was once again provided by the Koncerti.net agency, headed by the fearless, sturdy rock enthusiast Concert Freak!
Setlist
MOTORHEAD: 1.Bomber 2.Damage Case 3.I Know How to Die 4.Stay Clean 5.Metropolis 6.Over the Top 7.One Night Stand (plus Philip Campbell guitar solo) 8.The Chase Is Better Than the Catch 9.Get Back In Line 10.I’ll Be Your Sister 11.The One To Sing the Blues (plus Mikkey Dee drum solo) 12.Orgasmatron 13.Going to Brazil 14.Killed by Death 15.Iron Fist —encore— 16.Whorehouse Blues 17.Ace of Spades 18.Overkill DUFF McKAGAN’S LOADED: 1. Sick 2. Seattlehead 3. Sleaze Factory 4. New Rose (orig. The Damned) 5. Executioners Song 6. We Win 7. Dead Skin 8. Cocaine 9. Your Name 10. Lords of Abbadon 11. Attitude (orig. Misfits) 12. It’s So Easy (orig. Guns N’ Roses)
Photo gallery
