Motörhead LIVE @ SSE Arena, Wembley, London – 08.11.14
Alejandro De Luna
Review published for Gigslutz
Despite Motörhead having been on the road for almost 40 years, it is still an unbeatable gear of filth and boisterous noise; a black beast packed with anger and ready to detonate its sonic impurity to the loyal audience in one of their biggest gigs in years at the British capital. “Don’t forget us, we are Motörhead and we play rock ‘n’ roll” says Lemmy Kilmister before leading the audience into a catatonic state of noise and chaos in ‘Overkill’, their closing testimony that proves the undeniable: Motörhead are one of the best live acts, and certainly the loudest motherfuckers on the planet.
The music still sounds relevant, unique, nonconformist and honest. Their legacy is as immaculate as unclean, its importance goes beyond the boundaries of metal and punk and still, after all these years, there is no band that can simulate the mammoth sound of the trio, especially when you put these filthy dissidents with their gear connected and in front of a crowd. Motörhead still laughs out loud at those untalented wannabes and posers trying to play the rock ‘n’ roll game, even with Mr. Kilmister approaching his septuagenarian anniversary.
While the speed freaks, headbangers, metal heads and punks deal with the moshing in classics like ‘Killed By Death’, ‘Damage Case’, ‘No Class’, ‘Metropolis’, ‘Shoot You In The Back’ and ‘Ace of Spades’, the skinny and almost mythological silhouette of Lemmy Kilmister does not move an inch from its corner. The legendary Rickenbacker marks the pattern of the frantic noise and anarchy coming out of Motörhead’s iconic tower of Marshalls while Lemmy´s throat sounds like it has been swallowing – apart from the daily doses of Marlboro and a bottle of Jack Daniels – barb wirefor decades. The man could be 68 or a hundred years and still nobody could sing better than him.
The band is Lemmy Kilmister’s porthole through the mind of a man that transpires rock ‘n’ roll and lives like there’s no reason to, but also like there’s no point in dying… yet. This dark entity is one of the last survivors of true rockers whose mission has been making auto destruction tempting while living with his own rules (if there are any). And if you add Phil Campbell’s furious riffs and rock ‘n’ roll cliché-like solos along with Mikkey Dee’s voracious drumming like there’s no tomorrow (as proved in ‘Doctor Rock’), the result is just this little thing we call rock ´n´roll.
If “Lemmy is the baddest motherfucker in the world” as Dave Grohl once said, then his band is still the baddest band on the fuckin’ planet, exhaling its last breath before the passing of time extinguishes one of the last glances of anarchy and noise.
If rock ‘n’ roll should have a soundtrack, it should be called Motörhead. We all know that, and they confirmed it last Friday.
