Album Review: Motörhead – Orgasmatron (40th Anniversary Edition)
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Not many bands could have produced such a Holy Trinity of records in such a short space of time as Motörhead managed between March 1979 and October 1980, when the world was honoured with Overkill, Bomber and Ace of Spades. All bone fide classics that every reader should have at least two copies of each, on a variety of formats, somewhere in the collection.
The trio of Lemmy, Fast Eddie and Philthy Phil remained for one more record, Iron Fist, in 1982, before Eddie Clarke departed for Fastway and Thin Lizzy’s Brian Robertson picked up the guitar for the divisive Another Perfect Day in 1983.
It would be another three years before Motörhead would issue seventh album, 1986’s Orgasmatron, with an almost entirely new line-up and expanding to become a four-piece for the first time on record. Brian’s departure signalled the recruitment of Wurzel and of Phil Campbell – neither player is still with us, alas – and long-time drummer Mr Taylor sat this one out as he played with other projects, opening the drum-stool for Saxon sticksman, Pete Gill.
With seventy-five percent of the band swapped, it was hardly surprising that Orgasmatron’s sound is so very different from its predecessor; where Another Perfect Day was overplayed at times, this new album hits immediately with the dirty, crunching riffs and Lemmy’s snarl of Deaf Forever. It’s a slower Motörhead, but one that gave no quarter in the same manner of anything they had recorded since. The violent battle imagery takes the listener into dark places, and it was apparent that the combination of Wurzel and Phil were equal to anything that had gone before.
Nothing Up My Sleeve, Claw and Riding With the Driver are classic Ace of Spades-era ‘head with its proto-speed metal assault; Mean Machine has a classic rock kinda vibe that can hardly mask its own adrenaline-fueled rampage, while both Build for Speed and Doctor Rock seem to be precursors to how the band would sound later in their career.
The title track goes for the same dissonant sound that Motörhead would unleash periodically, slow and diabolic, lyrically dense and taking shots at the societal sacred cows of organised religion, politics and ‘justified’ war. It’s hypnotically repetitive and discordantly unsettling at the same time.
Clocking in at a smidge over thirty-five minutes, Orgasmatron is my personal favourite of Motörhead ’s records, the grandeur of the Holy Trinity being fully acknowledged, I just loves me this record – always have!
Not so much Lemmy, who was not at all happy with how the album sounded when it came back from the being mixed in New York, blaming producer Bill Laswell for delivering a mix he called dreadful and muddy, pulling no punches in the autobiography: White Line Fever (Simon & Shuster: London, 2016).
For this fortieth anniversary release, the old girl is getting a brand-new remaster courtesy of long-time Motörhead associate, Cameron Webb, taken from the original tapes and given a polish more in keeping with what the band wanted, rather than the album producers Bill Laswell and Jason Corsaro. This new master gives the album a snarling sharpness that makes it sound thoroughly dangerous. Even though some of the dirt has been brushed off, Orgasmatron is still the feral beast it’s aways been, only now with a shiny new suit.
While in the process of remastering the record, Cameron decided to give it a remix, adding accoutrements missing from the original recording; warrior chants on Deaf Forever, a more menacing feel to Claw, an even bigger, sweeping sound to Build for Speed, and a version of the title-track that will haunt your dreams for months. It will take some time to get to grips with these new mixes of the old songs – I am, after all, old and don’t take to change lightly – especially not on music I’ve been listening to since I was sixteen-years-of age. But I didn’t pitch the laptop through the window and scream ‘sacrilege’, so I suppose I liked them more than curmudgeonly-old me would like to admit.
Bonus material includes rehearsal versions of the title track, Doctor Rock and Ridin’ With the Driver, studio outtakes of Mean Machine with a very unexpected opening guitar part, and Nothing Up My Sleeve, which runs to more than ten-minutes, and an alternative version of Claw.
Three of Orgasmatron’s tracks were captured for a Radio 1 Friday Rock Show – don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore – session; the titular tune, Doctor Rock and Deaf Forever, along with No Remorse’s Killed By Death, recorded in May of 1986 and broadcast in August of the same year, previously available on the BBC Live & In-Session record of 2005.
That also included the spoken word version of Orgasmatron, with Lemmy himself narrating a sobering poem of the absolute abuse of power we endure every day of our lives.
Options will be either a 2 CD version or a triple vinyl, including liner notes giving the story of the album by Neil Perry, alongside a host of rare photographs; there’s even a single record version on transparent vinyl, which features the remastered version of Orgasmatron.
It’s Eighties Motörhead, remastered and remixed, with some bonus features. Feels like Christmas has come early.
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