Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Motörhead - Ace of Spades (1980)

Five albums in and Motörhead actually were motoring.  On Parole aside the band was enjoying much success with their first three albums with Overkill and Bomber showing what the band were really capable of.  The established line up of Lemmy, Filthy and Fast Eddie had gelled together well and the momentum showed no sign of abating with the impending release of Ace of Spades.

The anthemic title track remains one of their best known songs to this day, but this record also has my personal favourite track, (We Are)The Roadcrew .  The rest of the album though is a bit of a mish-mash of full on speed metal paced rock 'n roll that doesn't all stick to the wall it gets flung against at near a million miles an hour.  Sticking to a tried and tested formula is all well and good and most definitely served the band well for the bulk of their career but here some tracks do just kind of pass you by.  Live to Win, Fast And Loose and Fire, Fire are particular victims of this despite the latter songs best efforts at a catchy chorus.

As much as I have played the hell out of this record, I never thought until today when I sat down to review it just how patchy it actually is.  I mean let's be clear here.  It is never terrible, in fact it doesn't stray into the territory of ever being bad even.  There's just a lot single tracks merging into one wall of entertaining yet very familiar sound. The album really needs a couple of more anthem like tracks to lift its stature that bit higher for me.

It seems almost bizarre to criticise a Motörhead album for following a set format and believe me, I ain't looking for no massive variety here just a bit more memorability.  After the lukewarm On Parole  the bar wasn't that high and I would argue that things didn't pick up again album wise until Orgasmatron some six years after this release.