live @ 930 Club 6.27.2000
When Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister started Motorhead in 1975, he told an interviewer that his fledgling band’s sound “will be so dirty, that if we move in next door to you, your lawn will die.” In the 25 years since, Lemmy has rarely strayed from that philosophical slant, and Tuesday night at the 930 Club, the latest incarnation of Motorhead--- still claiming they are “the loudest band on earth”--- was as lowdown and earsplitting as ever in what was the penultimate performance of their current North American tour.
The seminal British trio have been around long enough to see heavy metal go in and out of fashion on multiple occasions, and though it is currently on a popularity upswing again, guitarist Phil Campbell and drummer Mikkey Dee surged along with Lemmy’s buzzsaw bass, paying little attention to the howling, near-capacity crowd. Instead, they concentrated on blasting the trademark sound that has inspired a thousand metal bands.
The set list was a typically balanced affair, offering selections from the latest Motorhead slab (“We Are Motorhead”) alongside all-time classics like “Bomber”, “Iron Fist” and “Killed By Death”. Among the new tunes, “Stay Out of Jail” and “We Are Motorhead” were standouts, and only an ill-advised cover of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” lacked the expected Motorhead truculence . Longtime fans were treated to some deep catalogue with a version 1979’s “Metropolis”.
“This is all we do,” Lemmy said at one point, “we don’t do anything else.” That seemed true, judging by their effective craftsmanship and power, and it won’t be at all surprising if Lemmy and some version of Motorhead is still pounding metal and blithely ignoring trends for another 25 years.
Washington Post, June 2000
