665 Motörhead - The Ace of Spades (1980)

 665 Motörhead - The Ace of Spades (1980)

Studio Album - Heavy Metal



About the Act:

Motorhead, or more precisely Motörhead were a British Heavy Metal/Hard Rock band from London, who were the fore-runners of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) which spawned bands like Dio and Iron Maiden.

Lemmy was fired from Hawkwind, he claims "for doing the wrong kind of drugs". He formed the trio Motorhead, who were more focused on a kind of macho reality than sci-fi and fantasy, and created a new sound. After a rocky (haha) start, they gained a following and lots of success.

About the Album:

This was their fourth studio album, and the first one to have particularly strong commercial success. It contains their signature song "The Ace of Spades".

My History with this Album:

None, although I know the song "The Ace of Spades". Many people do.

Review:

Although the band consistently claimed they were "just rock n roll", this is clearly metal, although not really similar to the stuff that is called metal nowadays. They were apparently the start of speed metal and thrash metal. Also, they were apparently popular with Punk fans also. One reason to slap the "metal" label on them is their black leather styling, and the umlaut, and the imagery they tended to use.

The sound is raw, loud and gutsy. A lot of this is down to the guitar, which is very overdriven. It's also fast, bumping along at some pretty fast beat speeds. The drummer sounds like he has four arms, and possibly more legs than normal too. The drum sound is very "rock" with quite a slack hi-hat sound and lots of fills and speed. Sometimes the bass drum is done repeatedly fast, something that went forwards into later metal. The bass is mostly lost in the mix, but often following the same line as the guitar (a dead giveaway of Metal-ness). The singing is more growly-shouting than singing, although apparently this is more singy than they were previously. 

Musically, the structures and chord sequences are pretty simple, but with the added feature of jumping chords that are not necessarily in the same "key" as the previous chord. Actually they tend to stay on one chord for a section and switch. The guitar playing is pretty impressive, and while the sound is rough-edge, it is actually pretty tight. This seems to come from being a trio. This core, fast, thrashy sound is what makes them who they are, and it's high-energy stuff. It was a good album to listen to in the morning on the way to work, it woke me up.

The songs are not mystical or subtle, the only song that really has any element of non-real life is "Shoot You In The Back", which is about westerns, but even then it frames it as "western movies". For Lemmy, who was their primary songwriter, this was presumably a definite step, as his previous band Hawkwind were all about wizards and spaceships. Although the songs are not difficult to understand in any way, they are well written, or I think so. Immediate, and accessible, but I'm not pulling faces at clichés or bad rhymes. Quite a few of the songs are about casual sex, "Jailbait" is a bit close to the bone these days, "Love Me Like A Reptile" is fun, exploring different reptiles and metaphors. I really liked (We Are) The Road Crew, something Lemmy had first hand experience of. The rest are pretty good too, though.

Yeah so that brings me on to my opinion. I loved it. Mostly for the feel of the music which is energetic but skilful. There's a lot of technical ability here, and the album is well-executed. There's just enough variety in the sound that I don't feel like they are too formulaic, but there is definitely one "sound". It's rock, and it does what good rock should do, get your feet tapping and your heart pumping, and fire you up with adrenaline. I'm not behind all of the messages in the songs but, yeah, I love it.

8.5/10


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3rxF05Aux0QTrN533Kjc91

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLChW05H5_an1R0umN3Fn0E5vT0O1WS0Wx

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_of_Spades_(album)



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