Artist: Motörhead
Label: Future PLC/Motörhead Music
Release: 2010
Length: 39:15
Rating: 3/5
Motorhead are a band that clings to the rock n’ roll constant. They don’t change. Motorhead – those three horsemen with their rough, rugged look – are synonymous with inflexibility, rocker wildness and arrogance, even in the new age. And yet. In 2010 the lineup puts out its 20th consecutive studio album, “The World Is Yours” (2010). One look at the cover tells you what’s hiding behind it: old petrified relics, lumbering into the present with their clunky, stocky frames. Sadly, we can be thankful for that today, since the young generation only rarely manages anything beyond the “copy – paste” function.
With Motorhead, though, it’s been more than obvious for years that they’ve run out of even halfway smart ideas for song titles. Just skim the track list of the new album and you get the feeling you’ve read these titles countless times, a long time ago. The sermon is familiar. Planet Earth is a pit of violent destruction that keeps regenerating itself as long as the atmosphere is still breathable for oxygen-using terrestrial organisms (if we limit ourselves to life on land), the water is still drinkable and there’s still enough food, even if in a pinch you get shoved into the role of a cannibal, or end up munching skin parasites off your neighbor. All of which lasts, of course, until the final, inevitable, cathartic vision of an apocalypse brought on by a virus called: humanity. Add that men are lone riders who make a point of breaking the law of the land, and women are mere objects of vice, good for one thing only, all of them putting out willingly, and Motorhead’s philosophy is laid bare for the twentieth time running. Crude, but largely very true.
The realization that the ideas are gone is hardly new. The slightly newer one is that they’re not even all that welcome. After Motorhead grew into a quartet in the second half of the eighties, the records mostly differed only in the chosen production and the dose of melodic element – and here you have to be careful – we’re talking Motorhead. But if we call to mind songs like Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me (“Bastards”, 1994), Don’t Believe A World (“Overnight Sensation”, 1996) or Walked A Crooked Mile (“Hammered”, 2002), it’s clear that after the post-Another Perfect Day transformation Motorhead often liked to reach for a touch of the influence of The Beatles, who once opened young Lemmy’s eyes to the world of musical entertainment. So we could also conclude that “Motorizer” (2008) is again a more retro-rock record, compared with its noisier predecessor “Kiss Of Death” from 2006.
And since Philip Campbell, neither in his shaped guitar sound, let alone his playing style, is Eddie Fast Clark, much less Brian Robertson, turning back to the Motorhead image of the early eighties can’t possibly be thrilling or otherwise stirring on new albums. Some of that element naturally clings to Motorhead; that’s a plain fact, embodied and carried within by Lemmy. But this moment of turning to the “primal source” was more obvious on “Motorizer” than on the band’s earlier studio albums. So on that front it was a less interesting Motorhead album, which the band will of course deny in a heartbeat.
The new album growls a lot more again. More to Campbell’s taste. And of course more to the taste of Mikkey Dee’s drum destructiveness. More “Kissofdeath-style”. And that’s the stance that suits the band’s image in the new millennium better. What you see and what you hear is what you get. The constant of dirty rock n’ roll rumbling, where the famous man – that unique figure of rock culture Ian Lemmy Kilmister, even with seven decades on his shoulders – keeps a poison of high-octane burnout in his voice, one that comes across as terrifying, shocking, debauched, nihilistic, destructive (the associations just keep coming), same as at the start of his career. A week before the album’s official release, the band dropped a single for the song Get Back In Line, where the touch of rock n’ roll debauchery is, for the first time on the record, more palpable. Rock N’ Roll Music tries to capture the essence of Born To Raise Hell from the album “Bastards” (1994), while the song Waiting For The Snake is Lemmy’s latter-day invitation to the ladies: “Come here, girl, uncle’s gonna show you something.” Just like he used to do with songs like Killed By Death (“If you’ll squeeze my lizzard, I’ll put the snake on you”) or Love Me Like A Reptile, only back then he wasn’t an uncle yet. Brotherhood Of Man tries to distill some of the musical essence that Motorhead have been pouring from album to album ever since the birth of the song Orgasmatron. An expected move. And the closing By Bye Baby Bye Bye? The fastest song on the album. And with the most straight-up rock n’ roll content. Think Going To Brasil.
So the bottom line, even after the 20th album, has been the same for a few years now. The album every Motorhead fan wants, unburdened by everything the band put out up to and including “Another Perfect Day”, that is, unburdened by classic Motorhead rock. “The World Is Yours” is a good album. Once again they’ve gone for a sharper, noisier, hell-raising stance, which suits the new Motorhead better than “Motorizer” did. As for other changes, there are none. And last but not least: good thing there aren’t. Lemmy’s vocals are irreplaceable and keep Motorhead an elusive rock phenomenon even in 2010. So Motorhead can go on to release another 20 completely identical studio albums. Nobody will argue with them on that.
Lineup
Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister – bass, vocals
Phil Campbell – guitar
Mikkey Dee – drums
Production
Cameron Webb
Track list
1. Born to Lose (4:01)
2. I Know How to Die (3:19)
3. Get Back In Line(3:35)
4. Devils In My Head (4:21)
5. Rock ‘n’ Roll Music (4:25)
6. Waiting for the Snake (3:41)
7. Brotherhood of Man (5:15)
8. Outlaw (3:30)
9. I Know What You Need (2:58)
10. Bye Bye Bitch Bye Bye (4:04)
