Motörhead

The longer in the tooth rock’n’roll (and its purveyors) gets, the easier it becomes to track the genre’s strange trajectory. Liken it to a rocketship: if an artist/band actually makes it off the ground, they’re fucking lucky. Survive out of the atmosphere/first album? Amazing. However, after time and distance, they stray from home base and the signal is lost. They’re written off until they hopefully reach the end of the universe and come full circle. Kiss of Death finds Motörhead recognising our solar system after being uncharted (read: not worth bothering with) for years. Comprised of loud, straight-forward MoHead rock that blast away, toss out some of Lemmy’s inherent quips of wisdom and wrap up before the overdriven bass shakes your walls apart, one could call the effort fucking amazing… depending on what you compare it to. No, it’ll never top their best but it’s the closest they’ve come to say, Sacrifice since. Gone are the rambling tracks and "experimentation” with acoustics (for the most part), replaced with that guttural, pelvic thrust that defined them in the first place. If this keeps up, maybe Kilmister will actually land the ship and leave a true legacy instead of fizzling out or blowing up as it was starting to seem.