FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Literally, a “dark horse” is an unexpected or unknown victor, a competitor that defies the odds, mocks the prognosticators, and pulls off a win that nobody saw coming. While its short game may have fizzled and its medium game may have been relegated to disowned curiosity, Another Perfect Day’s long game has proven durable and significant to an extent that nobody could have anticipated.
Minor quibbles aside, this is a great collection that features enough rarities and previously unreleased material (including a great four song Peel session from 1980 and BBC sessions from ’80 and ’86) that on musical merits alone this would be worth purchasing.
Track after track of Orgasmatron delivers everything you could expect from a Motörhead record: fuzz, the distinct, violent and sexual, cigarette ravaged vocals of Lemmy, solos to air guitar along with, groove to shake your ass to, and power to pump your fist to.
In this writer’s opinion, this album is probably the most cohesive, most consistent effort from Motörhead since 1991’s 1916. So much so, in fact, that it almost seems that album was a template for the songs on The Wörld Is Yours.
While not every track can boast the same impressive quality, We Wish you A Metal Xmas… offers a bit of sonic relief from the repetitive soundtrack that normally accompanies the Christmas season. If you take it with a grain of salt and pinch of irony, you might even find yourself enjoying a carol or two.
While the influence of Maryland doom is clearly present, Earthride slogs along the swamplands of such straight-ahead sludge-metal outfits as Crowbar and Weedeater at its best, and a ballsier, tone-deaf BLS at worst.
I feel this band always had this kind of album in them and now have fully realized their potential in Nucleus: a glorious heavy metal album that should put a shit-eating grin on every metal head’s face.