Overkill
Motorhead
- Style
- Motorhead Heavy Metal !
- Label
- Essential Records
- Year
- 1979
- Reviewed by
- Thierry
Killing songs: all !! (no weak songs)
Back in '79, the seventies were to reach the end and the metal scene was quite
lost in the fog or sleeping, caught between punk and disco. And then suddenly
came from nowhere an album which will shook the world forever : Overkill !!
With this war cry, the metal scene will never be the same again ... The album
will reach immediate success and went Top 30 in UK reaching No. 24. By the fall
of '79, the band has sold over 1'000'000 records in Europe alone !
The french magazine "Best" called it "Metal masterpiece"
and they were really right. Just let's speak about the sleeve : the exploding
skull speaks for itself and indicates what kind of metal meltdown the listener
will find on the record. The album begins with the title track so appropriate
: Overkill. The "animal" begins with the double bass drum which
will be the metal trademark since then, after came Lemmy with his monstruous
bass playing and finally "fast Eddie" enters the stage with his straightforward
but efficient riffs. And this crazy train will never stop 'til (Hammersmith
!) the end of the record. Listening to this album is like receiving a fist right
in the face.
The album contains such classics as Overkill, Capricorn, No Class, Metropolis
and Limb From Limb. I recommend you to hear the incredible second guitar
solo (from Lemmy himself) on Limb From Limb, which begins after an unsuspected
pace acceleration : crazy like a fox ... This album is well balanced between
fast metal songs, rock anthems and hard rock gems, and it reunited under the
same banner punks, metal heads and rock fans, which is not his least credit.
This album was produced by Jimmy Miller, former producer of the Rolling Stones.
Of course, after 22 years one can say that the production is definitely locked
in the eighties, but the remastering add power and clearness to this masterpiece.
With this album, Motörhead embarked for a full UK headline tour
with Girlschool as guests, and then they toured extensively throughout
Europe, capitalizing on the album's success. Nowadays, Motörhead
still play onsatge 4 songs from this album (Overkill, Capricorn, No Class,
Metropolis), which shows that it has passed the test of time and will remain
a true classic.