04. Motorhead Overkill 1979 (Bronze)
Hard Rock
The mean, the bad and the downright ugly!
Overview
After the crudeness of their official debut album
Motorhead two years earlier (official as their earlier debut
On Parole had not been released) this trio of gritty rockers would see their mean and raw sound all come together on one album and that album would of course be
Overkill. The album would make Kerrangs “100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time” and usher in one of the most iconic rock acts of their generation and in frontman Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister they would have one of the most recognizable and volatile frontmen around. He would be a figure that would quickly become synonymous with all kinds of vices as far as British and international audiences were concerned, and his hard living and hard drinking band mates weren’t far behind either! Lemmy had formed Motorhead as far back as 1975, after his departure from space rock weirdos Hawkwind and he had quickly formed the breakneck and cruder sounding Motorhead. Original members had included Larry Willis (Pink Fairies) and very briefly Lucas Fox, but both of these were short lived, as with the the arrival of Fast ‘Eddie’ Clarke’ and Phil ‘Philthy’ Taylor the infamous trio would be formed. When it came to categorizing the band, it was obvious that Motorhead were not interested in name tags or any other kind of label for that matter and were just concerned with playing their own brand of rock ‘n’ roll that sounded downright mean and was often played at breakneck speed. Before 1979 bands of course had sounded both fast and even nasty, but none quite did it as authentically as Motorhead did and just one look and listen of the band would confirm this fact. In many ways Motorhead’s ethos was certainly in stark contrast to Lemmy’s previous band Hawkwind, who had provided us with a batch of in-depth and overly complex musical arrangements, along with an even more demanding subject matter to go with it (well they were a druggy space rock band!) Lemmy himself had apparently been thrown out of Hawkwind, because he did different drugs to the rest of the band and his face just didn’t fit there anymore (it’s one of several reasons given) So whatever he was taking, it was certainly as far removed as you could get from the weird meanderings of Hawkwind and Hawkwind’s loss would eventually be the metal’s gain! Success though had initially been painfully slow for the band, who despite forming back in 1975 had seen their record label not releasing their
On Parole album and then their following
Motorhead album hadn’t really cut it quality wise either,
Overkill of course would rectify these setbacks with an ugly blast of rampant rock!
Lemmy- Bass/Vocals
Fast ‘Eddie’ Clarke- Guitar
Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor
Production- Jimmy Miller
Album
Overkill- With its heavy percussion intro the title track would be an archetypal Motorhead son. The song is fast, mean and loud and takes no prisoners where it counts, and the song closes out with a heavy percussion and a blistering guitar finale to end an epic 5 minutes!
Stay Clean- The band take their foot slightly off the accelerator here for the second track and again the track is a great example of the quality in depth on the album. There is also some great guitar work here by Fast ‘Eddie’ Clarke.
(I Won’t) Pay Your Price- Lemmy starts off with the line “I’m so drunk” and the song is an uptempo track that really harks back to the band’s earlier 1970s hard rock influences.
I’ll Be Your Sister- Another great track and it works as a perfect pair with the previous song, but is probably the more accomplished of the two songs on offer.
Capricorn- One of the band’s few attempts to go for a more ambitious sound and also the use of a slightly more atmospheric backdrop. Overall the track comes off as neither great nor bad and best assessed as being average.
No Class- The song has a pacey rock start to kick-off the b-side of the album and it’s a solid track throughout.
Damage Case- One of the more punk orientated tracks by the band and the track demonstrates a more typical rock approach overall, it’s also a song which is very strong b-side album material.
Tear Ya Down- Another punk orientated track which is punctuated by some great guitar work.
Metropolis- A totally different pace here and a more traditional rock orientated track by the band and the line “I Don’t Care” certainly resonates the vibe and spirit of the band.
Limb from Limb- A more traditional 1970s blues orientated hard rock track and the band probably work it better than some of the other slower based tracks on the album, but then the band throw everything up and gives the speed based finale that they really excel on! Some versions of the album with bonus tracks have “Louie Louie” which is a cover of the Richard Berry song, which was also a single and the first time the band appeared on Top of the Pops.
Verdict
By 1979 there was plenty of reason for Motorhead to feel both anger and frustration over their lack of previous success, but luckily both this anger and frustration would flow like a river for them in 1979 with the recording of their
Overkill album! From the word go the band went for the jugular with the onslaught of the title track “Overkill” with its overdriven guitars and take no prisoners stance, the song remains one of the great signature hard rock tracks of its time and a track that even Motorhead themselves couldn’t always match! Other strong uptempo tracks include “(I Won’t) Pay Your Price” and “I’ll Be Your Sister”’ two excellent tracks that seem much longer than their sub-three minute listing times, possibly because they’re just such great tracks to listen to! Then we have “No Class” “Damage Case” and “Tear Ya Down” which are trilogy of tracks that have a strong punk vibe to them and were certainly contemporary for their time and provided the meat for the Motorhead bone. When the band took their foot of the accelerator, the quality luckily remained by and large on songs like “Stay Clean” which is certainly another stalwart Motorhead track, and then we have “Limb from Limb” where the first part of the song is about as near as Motorhead ever dared to get to Led Zeppelin. The album though has one or two weaker tracks like “Capricorn” and “Metropolis” two tracks that I’ve never really been exactly enamoured with, largely because these are two slower tracks that probably needed a bit more songcraft about them to really make them work, especially on a song like “Metropolis” which had the potential to be a really great song. As a band Motorhead could come across as sloppy and crude, two adjectives that would often denote a negative appraisal when it came to 1970s hard rock and metal bands, but in Motorhead’s case this turned out to be just the perfect description for them, as they would turn this sloppiness and cruidity into a fine art form on their
Overkill album and on careful listening the intensity and focus of the band is spot on, and this focus though was certainly stronger on their faster tracks where the band’s true talent lay. So just what type of impact did Motorhead have around this time? Well if the classic Judas Priest album
Stained Class (see 1978 review) had already given us the perfect blueprint for the NWOBHM a year earlier and the future blueprint for the 1980s technical-metal scene, it would now be the turn of Motorhead to provide all the energy for not just the NWOBHM movement, but also for the future extreme metal scene of the 1980s. This impact would be largely thanks to their exploits on both the
Overkill and
Bomber albums (higher on the list) along with their never say die attitude!