102. Motorhead / Bastards. 1993. 4/5.

By the time 1993 rolled around, it had been a long time since a really good - and I mean a really good – Motörhead album had been released. There had been some good phases, and no doubt some good songs, but overall, albums that caught the ear and made you want to play them were short on the ground. The two albums released in the 1990’s to this point in time were especially true of this. Each had a couple of good tracks but also some very average fare. THAT WAS PARTLY TO DO WITH THE TIMES, AND PARTLY TO DO WITH THE BAND HARMONY. The band was also still in the midst of record company disputes, which led to them signing with a German label for this album called ZYX Music. The problem that arose with this was that the album was barely released outside of Germany, which made it very difficult for fans to get their hands on and for the band to promote it. It really wasn’t until the turn of the century, through another label, that the album received the wide exposure it deserved.
This was also the first album recorded by the short-lived foursome of Lemmy, Wurzel, Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee, with Mikkey taking over fulltime from Phil Taylor from this album onwards. And the sound of this album is amazing as a result. The twin guitars, Mikkey’s brutal drumming, and Lemmy on song from the start. Everything begins to come together for the band on this album.
The onset of the grunge revolution meant that some bands changed their sound to ride the wave, in the hope to either claim popularity or to chase it. Motörhead instead released an album that stuck to what they do best while revisiting the sound that made them the band they are. An album that really rebelled against what was occurring in music around the world, and put it out under the title of “Bastards”.

The first five tracks on this album are probably the equal of any first side of any Motörhead album recorded, and I don’t say that lightly. It has the right mood and pace and riffage on each such that they are not alike but they mesh together beautifully as songs on albums should. The opening track “On Your Feet or on Your Knees” is a fast paced start with a good riff and typical Lemmy attitude, and is a great way to start the album. “Burner” is super-fast even for this band in their heyday, and the drumming from Mikkey Dee, taking the fight to the grunge era music by showing that speed and fire still has a place in the music world. “Death or Glory” joins the party on a fast and furious pace led by the thumping drums and rumbling bass of Lemmy, while Wurzel and Phil Campbell riff along in glee, trading solos that keep the song blazing and fresh. This is a real throwback to those early albums, the songs bursting out of the speakers and full of life and noise. “I Am the Sword” sounds great musically driven by Mikkey’s 2/4 drum hammering while Lemmy’s vocals rumble beneath the surface of the guitars. This is another beauty, a song that really is understated but brilliant as a result. Then comes the fire and energy of “Born to Raise Hell”, a terrific rollicking track that showcases everything that makes this band so good when they are at the top of their game.
You can’t have everything great I guess, and for me “Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me” is a part of that here. It is the ‘ballad’ of the album, and is certainly as hard-hitting in lyrical content as for instance Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed” is, so I’m not disparaging that. But the song is out of place with the whole album, especially as the closer to Side A. To this point it had been hard rocking and fast and enthralling, and then we get to the middle track of the album and it stops dead. It’s a mood killer, and it just makes me think this was mis-thought. Not to mention that Lemmy’s vocals in no way suit a song like this. Where you would place a song like this on an album like this I don’t know. Probably as a B-side to a single, but of course by this day and age singles were becoming a thing of the past. Taking the song on its own merits it is good enough. As a pointer within the framework of the album it holds things back.
“Bad Woman” opens the second side of the album and kicks thing back into gear, and even has a Jerry Lee Lewis-like piano banging away along with the crew. It’s a great song that combines all of those eras of rock together, and the energy emitted revitalises the album once again. “Liar” is another track in a similar vein. “Lost in the Ozone” is the second slow song on the album, though not so much as the previous track. It is more circumspect but still retains some of the energy that the rest of the album has. “I’m Your Man” has a bit of Soundgarden in the groove, which is the first hint on this rock album that Seattle exists. It’s a real surprise when you first hear that guitar sound on the song. It’s still a good song but the surprise continues every time I put this album on. “We Bring the Shake” is an above standard hard rock track with great singalong lyrics while “Devils” almost feels like a stadium rock anthem the way it is played and sung, and as a result it is strange that it wasn’t ever played more often in the live set. It almost has a Kiss, or at the very least Paul Stanley quality about it, and reminds me of the closing track on the Shocker soundtrack album. It’s a great way to finish the album.

The journey to securing and listening to the entire Motorhead back catalogue for me didn’t begin in earnest until almost 25 years ago. The original albums were a must, and I had “1916” and “March or Die’ from the start of that 1990’s decade, but the others were basically a mystery until I began an earnest effort to track down copies of all of the albums released and listen to them. And that wasn’t easy in a time when music was going digital and physical albums of any description became harder to locate.
I’m not exactly sure when I first got a copy of “Bastards”, but I do remember my reaction to the album when I first listened to it all the way through. I was gobsmacked. So much so that I put it on again straight away to find out if I had been mistaken. Because what I was hearing was the best Motorhead album since the original Three Amigos had broken up. And if that was the case, why the hell was this album not better known by EVERYBODY?!
My reaction today is no different to then. This is a tremendous album, combining everything that was great about the band into one album. This is where the twin guitars for me really worked for the first time. This album feels and sounds bigger, and there is no doubt that Mikkey Dee’s peerless and powerful drumming is a major contributor to this being the case. Each song has a real drive that had been missing from Motorhead for some time. Mikkey puts them back in the contest on this album. The only disappointment is “Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me” and to a lesser extent “Lost in the Ozone”. They feel lost and misplaced on this album. You have my permission to use the skip button for them on this occasion.
While the first half of the album tends to eclipse the second half, this is one of my favourite albums by the band, in the main because the excellence is held throughout the whole of the album. There are a couple of songs that drag it back from being an absolute top shelf album, but it is by far the best album Motörhead released since their initial glory days, and the fact that it still holds up 30 years later is testament to that fact.
More difficult times were to come for the band, but the albums never stopped coming, something as fans we can all be thankful for during a time when a lot of music being released into the world was so unlistenable. You can never say that about a Motorhead album.