Román Leão

Tag: metal

  • Put on This Record: The Wörld is Yours—Motörhead [2010]

    There are three things in life you can be sure of: death, taxes, and Motörhead. When this album dropped, it felt like the Devil’s favorite band was everywhere. A documentary, Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son Of A Bitch, was burning cigarette holes in the screen, and this punishing new album was shredding speakers across the globe. Lemmy Kilmister and the lads were having quite a year, unbelievably, their 35th in existence.



    The Wörld is Yours roars out of the garage with Born to Lose, as classic a Motörhead trope as speed, sex, and well… death, preferably from too much speed and sex. Drummer Mikkey Dee’s pummeling double bass footwork underscores Lemmy’s proletariat philosophical musings: Right now / right here / lose your mind / but show no fear / Burn slow / no excuse / so unkind / born to lose. How the band waited 20 albums and 35 years to write a song called Born to Lose is an utter mystery.

    Road testing this album, I kept reaching for the volume knob, turning it up by turns through I Know How to Die, Get Back in Line, and Devils in My Head until the drivers of cars I started passing on the freeway were looking kind of scared.

    Motörhead has never been a “message” band, but if they ever had a point, it is this: everything eventually fails you except rock ’n’ roll. Get Back in Line, especially, showcases just what the band does better than just about anyone else standing: an unrelenting riff, a hypersonic beat, and a bass player that’s big, pissed off, and wired out of his warty skull.

    The trio does not slow down until the fifth track in, Rock ’n’ Roll Music. For any other band, this would be a highlight and probably the hardest song on the album. That’s Motörhead’s curse, they set the bar pretty high—high enough that a boilerplate boogie about rock, just doesn’t make the cut. Maybe Kilmister, et al., were still aiming at illusive, non-existent radio play, a strategy that dogged their 1992’s outing, March or Die. I don’t come to this table, however, looking for subtlety. No worries though, the band comes slamming back with the next track, Waiting for the Snake, which paints (what else?) a fatalistic picture of the state of modern society.

    The album takes an even darker turn with Brotherhood of Man. There’s no way to describe this song other than: Heavy as Fuck. When Lemmy grunts, Now your time has come / a storm of iron in the sky / War and murder come again / lucky if you die, you damn well get off your ass and lock the front door.



    Bye Bye Bitch Bye Bye is prototypical Motörhead, and just about the most perfect album closer I can imagine. Guitarist Philip Campbell, on board since 1986’s Orgasmatron, lets loose with everything he has left, leaving your speakers smoking, and your ears ringing. The way God, or Lemmy, intended.

    RIP Ian Fraser Kilmister (1945–2015)

  • The Prince is Dead, Long Live the Prince (of Darkness)

    John “Ozzy” Osbourne made quite a career out of the moniker, “Prince of Darkness.” The guy knew a good hook when he saw (or heard) one, but he was more than that to a few generations of fans now. Ozzy was a hero to every misfit who struggled to find their place in this crazy world. He was—and I mean this with all due respect, and today, a broken heart—he undisputed King of Fuckups.

    Anyone who has read his 2011 autobiography, I Am Ozzy, knows that the man should have died about a dozen times before Black Sabbath even started, that he wasn’t killed seems to imply some sort of preternatural intervention. It’s not our place to guess the intention of powers beyond our understanding, but I am glad it seemed to work in our favor.

    I first heard Black Sabbath on a purloined 8-track compilation, We Sold Our Soul For Rock ‘N’ Roll. I don’t remember who stole it or how it came into my possession, but, in retrospect, it’s only fitting that this gateway drug appeared by illicit means.

    Ozzy’s plaintive wail of, Oh, no! Please God help me! in the titular track makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up to this day even though I’ve heard it easily thousands of times. This was a guy in serious trouble, perhaps at the end of a road that started with possession of hot merchandise before leading to… to what? I had to know!

    The second song on that collection, The Wizard, follows the track order on the band’s first album and allows a small slice of light to cut through the incessant Birmingham cloud cover. Maybe the wizard will make everything all right after all. Nope.

    It’s the third track that sealed my fate as an Ozzy fan for nearly 50 years. Skipping the needle ahead past an iconic suite of jazz-inflected proto-metal from the Black Sabbath album, Warning, comes as, well… a warning, but like in one of those Japanese horror films, if you’ve heard it, it’s too fucking late for you.

    The crazy thing is, Warning is not even a Black Sabbath song, it’s a cover of a 1967 single by The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation. The what now, you ask? And you would be right. At the time, Dunbar was hot from drumming on John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers’ A Hard Road, which featured, wait for it, future Fleetwood Mac instigator Peter Green. I swear, were there like twenty people left in England in the ’60s?

    Somehow Sabbath takes this throwaway 45 and turns it into a signature statement of intent. Geezer Butler’s bass announces the proceedings before Ozzy sets the scene:

    Now the first day that I met ya / I was looking in the sky / When the sun turned all a blur / And the thunderclouds rolled by

    And then it gets worse for our man, Oz:

    The sea began to shiver / And the wind began to moan / It must’ve been a sign for me / To leave you well alone

    I have yet to find the right vocabulary to explain what it is in Ozzy’s delivery of the word, “shiver,” but there is a realness to it. Even though he didn’t write the song, he saw that shit. You can’t convince me that he wasn’t drawing on some experience of being out there in that moaning wind, metaphorically, or not.

    The short chorus comes up fast with Ozzy lamenting:

    I was born without you, baby / But my feelings were a little bit too strong

    It’s the way he hits the word “strong” that kills me, because it is not. It is anything but, it may not even be in key, and yet it somehow incorporates all the pain and frustration of the outsider. It is not a howl against the void, but more like a capitulation with the dark.

    After a serious masterclass in band dynamics, Ozzy crawls his way back to the mic:


    Now the whole wide world is movin’ / ‘Cause there’s iron in my heart / I just can’t keep from cryin’ / ‘Cause you say we’ve got to part / Sorrow grips my voice as I stand here all alone…

    Game over. Fucking sorrow has gripped his voice, man! Has there ever been a more legitimate take on the word? Billie Holiday may have delivered one, but her voice, even at its most vulnerable, was beautiful. Ozzy’s delivery is tantamount to crying ugly.

    I remained a devoted fan through his being sacked by Sabbath and I reveled in his jaw-dropping rebirth with Randy Rhoads, Bob Daisley, and Lee Kerslake [say their names], and beyond. I have to admit that I harbored a few misguided proprietary feelings toward our man when he became a reality show until I realized that there was enough Ozzy for everyone. Until today when there wasn’t.

    If anyone has ever earned a rest, it’s Ozzy. I don’t know what else to say. There’s iron in my heart.