It’s coming up on the two-year anniversary of the music world’s loss of Lemmy Kilmister, frontman of the band Motorhead. Because of his musical talent, he will live on forever even though his body is gone. Luckily, Motorhead fans get the chance to enjoy more Motorhead and Lemmy’s one-of-a-kind gritty vocals with this new album that was posthumously released this month. Under Cover is its title.
According to the press release for this new album, which was released this month, “one thing Lemmy Kilmister, Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee liked to do throughout their years together in Motorhead was grab a favorite song by another artist and give it a good old fashioned ‘Motörheading’. To run them through the Motörizer, if you will. To rock them, roll them and even give them an extra twist and edge.” That is what this cover album is full of. It even includes a previously unreleased cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes.”
The first track is a cover of Judas Priest’s “Breaking The Law.” This cover, with Lemmy’s guttural and gritty voice, makes this song sound almost better than the original. Phil and Mikkey fill in the sound by giving it that hard rock/metal sound the song deserves.
Lemmy proves he can rock the punk world with the band’s cover of “God Save The Queen” from the Sex Pistols. There isn’t one song on this covers album that isn’t awesome, but this one stands out a lot since it takes Lemmy’s vocals into a different genre and proves that he had an amazing talent for more than just metal.
The previously unreleased “Heroes” track plays as a wonderful tribute to another great musical talent we lost recently, although Bowie was still alive when Lemmy passed. Lemmy manages to keep that grit in his voice to a minimum while performing this song. You almost feel as though Bowie is with him on this track.
Motorhead plays Dio like it’s second nature on “Starstruck.” The band manages to keep the instrumentation the same, or pretty darn close, to the originals throughout the covers on this release. The only thing that makes Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” sound like it’s not the original is Lemmy’s vocals.
You’d think Motorhead were fans of The Rolling Stones, with covers of both “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Sympathy For The Devil”, both right in a row. If Mick Jagger had a rough night of drugs and alcohol this may be just what he’d sound like!
Ozzy’s “Hellraiser” is a song that Motorhead has been doing for awhile, and it is also included on this album. They try punk again with a cover of the Ramones “Rockaway Beach.” If this cover doesn’t make you love this album, nothing will. They are spot on with this one.
The cool thing about this album is that they cover a wide array of music, from rock and metal to punk. It’s not just a metal band doing metal covers, and they do each cover song justice. Twisted Sister’s “Shoot ’em Down” and Metallica’s “Whiplash” fill out the end of the album with some good old hair metal and some old school metal.
This is a must have CD for all Lemmy fans, all Motorhead fans, and anyone that likes good, hard music.
