Artist: Motörhead
Label: Bronze Records
Release: year
Length: 35.15
Rating: 4.5/5
“Overkill” is the second proper Motorhead album and the first officially released sonic document that Lemmy and co. spawned under Bronze Records. Today the album stands as an important milestone in the band’s story for two reasons. With “Overkill,” Motorhead finished laying the foundations of their signature sound, the very foundations on which they’d later, with the classics “Bomber” and “Ace Of Spades,” miraculously set off down the road to undreamt-of commercial triumphs. That sound stayed loyal to the merciless bombardment of your ear canals this time too, but with one important difference. By decisively turning its back on the naive punk-rocker warm-up of its predecessor, “Overkill” finally staked out the spread of a unique branch of rock & roll, one that modern medicine still hasn’t found an antidote for after 30 years! Luckily..
You’ll know right away that messing with Motorhead was no longer a good idea, the moment the opening “Overkill” gets drilled into your ears with Mengele-like sensitivity by the rabid Phily “animal” Taylor. The violent barrage of Taylor’s double bass pedals kicks open the gates of hell, and through them, decked out in Motorhead emblems, leaps the most bandit-like incarnation of rock & roll imaginable! There’s no way back from here! Gems like “I’ll Be Your Sister ” and “(I Won’t) Pay Your Price,” and especially the famous “No Class,” conjure up a unique rock & roll apocalypse without a second thought, one that promises the end of the world as we know it! It seems that before the merciless blade of Clarke’s relentless, raw guitar riffs, the uncontrolled nervous twitches of Philty “animal” Taylor and Kilmister’s ear-shredding bass distortion, nothing healthy, civilized or even remotely normal escapes. Only the hardened plague bacillus survives, grazing happily in the shelter of Lemmy’s warty facial real estate. Then there are “Tear Ya Down” and “Damage Case,” which win over the heart of the average well-read Neanderthal in an instant as an “unbeatable” combo of racket from a musically illiterate trio, with a barely detectable dose of melody and songwriting sense, and the pushy and appropriately annoying enthusiasm of a lyrically inspired cow inseminator, that is, Lemmy! “Stay Clean” is yet another favorite from the series of black-and-white projections of this symbiosis made in heaven, which in the frontal lobotomy category is simply without competition.
“Overkill” is the perfect manifesto of a barbaric take on rock & roll, one that’ll lead you down the road to the total collapse not only of civilization but of human existence as such. Don’t let that scare you off. As with all future Motorhead excursions, on “Overkill” too the intellectual capacity of your brain cells gets nicely trimmed, and this, sadly not exactly painless, procedure leaves you free to chat casually with euglenas and other mindless single-celled buddies. No two ways about it, after “Overkill” lynching the poor sod who defined man as a rational animal seems downright necessary.
Lineup
Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister: vocals, bass
Eddie “Fast” Clarke: guitar
Philty “Animal” Taylor: drums
Production
Jimmy Miller
Tracklist
1. Overkill
2. Stay Clean
3. (I Won’t) Pay Your Price
4. I’ll Be Your Sister
5. Capricorn
6. No Class
7. Damage Case
8. Tear Ya Down
9. Metropolis
10. Limb from Limb
