OK, here we go with Motörhead Overkill, the second album from this legendary and pioneering group. Released in early 1979. This for me is basically the quintessential Motörhead sound. The album opens up with THAT drumbeat, the one where Phil Taylor shows off his newly acquired double kick pedals and inadvertently inventing extreme metal drumming and to some degree thrash metal at the same time, with a drum hammering the likes of which no one in the metal scene had heard before. Did this beat invent extreme metal? Hard to say, but it definitely took heavy metal to a new extreme. It’s not long before the distorted onslaught of Lemmy’s bass and the guitars kick in. The band are back and they’re sounding even heavier and dirtier than their first record. It’s hard to pick a favourite Motörhead song but Overkill would have to be right up there. It has it all and is a fine way to open up one of the greatest metal albums ever released.
The grit continues with “Stay Clean” Lemmy’s voice is deeper and more gravelly than it had been before. This album contains a fair few songs that were to become almost permanent fixtures in Motörhead’s live set. One thing I like about Motörhead is their ability to write short punchy songs that live rent free in your head for years. Whilst the band is credited as pioneering the extremities of metal they actually have a lot of slower bluesier sounding songs with some good swing in there. “(I wont) Pay Your Price” being a prime example of this. “I’ll be Your Sister” is a rockin’ number but soaked in distortion. The next song “Capricorn” slows things down a bit, but it still carries some weight I have to say.
The second side of this record keeps the energy levels up with the rather infectious “No Class” and “Damage Case”. In interviews Lemmy used to say that the band are a rock n roll band, I have to agree with him here as most of these numbers are basically rock n roll, but a highly distorted and louder version than we’d heard before so it would well come across as Metal. The pace gets a bit more lively down again for “Tear Ya Down” and slows down for “Metropolis” and lastly “Limb from Limb” to close this album off.
I have to say this album is one class album. Everything on it is great. There’s not a dud track on the album and many of these songs were still played until the end. Others have been covered by contempory bands (Metallica for starters) and while Metal is still a thing these songs and the influence they carry on the metal scene of both the day and to this day will continue to live on.
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