Iron Fist-Motorhead

 This is a classic album from one of the greatest of the metal bands. Iron Fist is often considered to be one of the top Motorhead albums ever recorded. This album shows everything that Motorhead is about, really hard thrash and speed metal. Even if Motorhead will not admit it that is what they are. The instruments are incredible, the guitar has some spectacular parts, in particular the solos are amazing. The drums and bass also have their own fair share of air time. The vocals are pure Motorhead, with Lemmy barking out his lyrics, lyrics that are usually dark and violent. Interestingly though there is some cleaner Lemmy singing on this album as well. This is really amazing heavy metal with all sorts of intricacies that make this the world's hardest and possibly best power trio.

The guitar is amazing. There are spectacular solos and really powerful power chord riffs that hearken back to Jimmy Hendrix and early Led Zeppelin. The guitar has some really cool riffs in the solos as well. Practically every song has a solo and every single one of the solos is amazing and can blow your head off. The solos build up nicely and create a really nice atmosphere and sound which fly around the album. It feels almost GNR like, when you really get down into the riffs. The riffs are really well complimented by Lemmy's bass which gets a lot of nice powerful fills that make the music very powerful and satisfying. The bass fills up the music remarkably well. The drums are high powered and are also very intricate and awesome. These are all nicely complimented by Lemmy's singing and lyrics.

The vocals are pure Lemmy. However seeing as no other band really imitates Lemmy all Motorhead singing can be considered to be pure Lemmy. Anyway, Lemmy barks out his lyrics and provides a dark and powerful feel to the music that makes the music sound a lot heavier than it originally was. Lemmy has a great voice for making a metal band sound heavier, but the song really needs too be written for his unique voice. The lyrics are usually angry and try to describe the anger that Lemmy feels. However other songs are about love or violence, or both in the same song. All in all the vocals are very good, being unique and purely Motorhead, the lyrics are very dark and interesting.

All in all this is an excellent album that really embodies everything that Motorhead stands for. It fuses punk and heavy metal and it is just great to listen to. I like this album because it is hard and loud and bold. The instruments have amazing parts, most notably the guitar, which is loud powerful and awesome. The bass also has good lines and makes a tight rhythm section with the drums. The vocals are excellent and classic Lemmy Kilmeister. The lyrics are dark and angry and often punk-like. This is an awesome album which has all sorts of great music and awesome sounds that just come together to create a true piece of art. The best track is probably Iron Fist, however most of the songs are good.

OVERALL 9/10

We Wish You a Merry Xmas

So today we bought our Christmas Tree. So what does this mean for you? Why We Wish You a Metal Christmas of course! This is an album featuring a bunch of unique supergroups featuring all sorts of metal gods. You get to hear Iommi, Dio, Alice Cooper, and Lemmy among others. They take every over used christmas carols and makes them into awesome heavy metal. Everybody who likes heavy metal and christmas (aka every sane human being) should love this album. Some of the people performing together on here are like dream supergroups. Try Iommi, Dio, Steven Wright and Rudy Sarzo on the best version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen ever. Supergroups you and I fantasize about being formed come together. Some of the songs are simply silly but overall the lyrics stay true to the original version.

Run Rudolph Run, the amazing Chuck Berry track sounds amazing with distorted guitars and Lemmy singing to it. The guitar parts composed for the music are 100% pure awesome heavy metal. There are quite a few excellent solos here as well, especially in We Wish You a Merry Xmas. The vocalists are pretty much set to match the music. So Lemmy was probably chosen after Grohl for Run Rudolph Run for example. Dio is the perfect vocalist for his song God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Alice Cooper provides the perfect feel for Santa Claws, making it sound like some sort of demon worshipping song.

Some bits sound like they were taken from the artists earlier songs. For example God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen reminds me of a black sabbath song I can not quite name. The guitar is classic heavy metal overall though. It is overall reminiscent of early black sabbath and other early really heavy bands like Deep Purple. The vocalists are all perfect while the guitarists all get to show off their strengths with some of the best vocalists in heavy metal. This is a really cool album, that combines both humor and pure hardcore heavy metal. It just brings a smile to my face to hear George Lynch provide a guitar solo for Little Drummer Boy. This album makes me considerably more supportive of Christmas caroling.

Overall this is a really good album it just lacks some notable songs, AKA Jingle Bells. Still this album is worth listening to at anytime of the year really and I just love it. Tim “Ripper” Owens singing along to a heavy metal blues track about Santa Claus is just something that forces you to smile at the irony of it all. This also supports my theory of the holy trinity. Santa Claus, Jimmy Page, and Chuck Norris. You have to admit thats a good theory. Anyway this is the best christmas album I have ever heard. So go listen to it know kids, and Merry Christmas.

OVERALL 9.5/10

Ace of Spades-Motorhead

So yeah 2 reviews today, feel special huh? So now, 11 hours later Ima do a review of the classic early thrash album Ace of Spades by Motorhead. Another suggestion from my oh so helpful Uncle. Also known as one major metalhead. Anyway Lemmy the lead singer of Motorhead says that he is not metal but rock and roll, for the record THIS IS METAL LEMMY ACCEPT IT, YOU ARE AN AWESOME METAL SINGER. This is in fact better defined as early thrash metal than anything else and sounds really cool. It just explodes loud and vicious and shows off a lot of riff building skill with some great power chords in the back. What is also spectacular is that this is probably the worlds heaviest power trio. The fact that they get a sound just as hard as Maiden with only 1 guitar and a bassist who is also the vocalist is pretty spectacular to me. This just seems... I guess not musically possible but it is and it works AMAZINGLY well and sounds just really amazing and embodies true 80's metal.

The first thing you need to know about Motorhead is that Lemmy is no Robert Plant, or even James Hetfield. His voice by most standards sucks. Yet it actually works for this album. A man most people could sing better than just makes Motorhead awesome. He shows that they don't care about image or selling records just their music. If they cared about their music they would get a new lead singer, but that would kill what Motorhead actually is. And this album epitomizes Motorhead an awesome metal trio that has amazing skill and a vocalist with a voice that is PERFECT for this band and would otherwise never work ever not in a million years. Its really cool how it works for him and none other. Wikipedia describes his voice as “gravely” which is pretty much the best way to describe it to someone.

The other musicians are spectacular. While Lemmy's bass does not come through, HOLY CRAP that guitar is amazing! Especially on We are the Road Workers in which we get to here a brilliant solo at the end of the song which shows incredible technical skill on the part of Eddie Clarke. The drums are also brilliant. There is a particularly good drum part in Fire Fire. The album has some great songs on it, I like We are the Road Workers and Fire Fire. Fast and Loose has a title that can be taken out of context and when I first saw it I realized that bathroom humor is an odd thing to be going through your head as you sit down to write. There are 2 true classics on this album though. The 2 really amazing songs are of course Ace of Spades and Jailbait, both awesome Motorhead songs.

So this is a really hard rocking album that almost makes my ears bleed. It is pretty spectacular. There are technical chops and there is Lemmys gravelly voice all coming together to make a pretty amazing album. You totally should listen to this, I like it, it really made my evening. So yeah go crazy.

OVERALL 9/10

Ace of Spades