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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Motorhead-Ace of spades, 1980

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The year 1980 is often thought as the year that the New Wave of British Heavy Metal emerged. Yet some times so little is mentioned of the veteran British bands that released albums that year. Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Judas Priest and Motorhead all released strong albums that year. For Motorhead it a point that they spent several years building up to. The On parole and the self titled album were a starting point that established their rough powerful sound. Yet it was really the next two releases Bomber and Overkill where they started to come into their own. Then came this album which to me is one of their best. I think the overall feel of this album was that it was their heaviest at this point in their career. The aggressive, to the point attitude that has been with this band for most of their career is in full bloom here. The album starts with the fantastic title track which has become one of the real staples for this band. Next up "Love me like a reptile" with it's slightly odd riff and even stranger title. Other real standouts are (We are) the road crew which reads like a list of things the band's road crew has to do. It's humorous and certainly different.Down the home stretch we have "Fire fire" and "Dance" which are songs I only began to really appreciate in recent years. "Jailbait" is a tight paced track that moves along well. However it has to be mentioned that this album contains what is probably one of my favorite Motorhead tracks of all time. That is the closer "The Hammer" which to me is an absolute masterpiece which comes at you like uh....well, a hammer. I think this just edges out Iron Fist to be Motorhead's second best album of their long career. Certainly a must have album.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:51 AM

    My only knowledge of Motorhead comes from the WWE. I think they performed at a Wrestlemania or something.

    Is that blashpmey? ;)

    Steve~

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  2. Steven-No, Motorhead fit well with wrestling. Have you ever seen the movie Airheads? Lemmy has a cameo in that.

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  3. Great album. No matter how many times I hear "Ace of Spades," it remains one of my favoritie metal songs.

    And this album also has one of the oddest, most awkward, but still fun utterances in metal:

    "Western MOVIES!"

    -- david

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  4. Anonymous11:22 PM

    I must say I never really liked this album so much and strangely think it is one of their weakest. Maybe I don't like the word 'Ace' in a song because I don't care much for 'Ace of Spades' from Motorhead and 'Aces High' from Iron Maiden. There was no strong songs for me on this. The songs of this album I did like was Roadcrew, and Chase is Better...

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