Motörhead - Ace Of Spades (1980)

In honor of the recent death of Lemmy Kilmister I've decided to jump ahead on my list  and review an album by Lemmy's band Motörhead, namely Ace Of Spades. I know a few people who are huge Motörhead fans, but I'm not sure I can name a single song by the band. All I'm hoping for is this to be either seriously good heavy metal music in the vein of Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden, and hopefully not ridiculous trash a la Megadeth.

First impression... Motörhead is angry hair metal. Its music is heavy like Black Sabbath (heavy guitars, bass and drums) though much grittier, angrier, and faster. The lyrics so far have talked about kicking ass at playing cards and "loving like a reptile." So in spite of the gasoline-soaked vocal stylings of Lemmy Kilmister and the bone-crushing heavy riffs from whoever else is in the band (apparently Lemmy was the only constant member) the music feels pretty silly. Not a ridiculous kind of silly like I expect from The Dictators. It's a dark and crushing kind of silly. I'm arriving at the conclusion that Motörhead is a heavier version of AC/DC or a brutal version of Van Halen.

I don't really have much to say about Ace Of Spades- no complaints or really heavy compliments. The album isn't really complicated. Clearly Motörhead is only interested in one thing: rocking your fucking face off as hard and dirty as possible. About the only song that struck me was "Jailbait" because the lyrics are so explicitly scuzy. It made me feel unclean to listen to a creepy-looking fuck like Lemmy Kilmister saying he just can't wait to get down with some jailbait. Ick.

The rest of the music I felt like I had heard at least twice before the album was over. Not sure about this. There was nothing wrong with the music aside from being a little boring, repetitive, and derivitive after the first few songs. On the other hand unlike Metallica Motörhead knows how to keep their songs short, so the album was only 36 minutes long which I really appreciate. I'll give Ace Of Spades 3 stars mostly based on that, but the next instance of Motörhead I hear better sound a bit different.