Opening with Lemmy's battle cry of 'victory or die!', Bad Magic is unrelenting, hard rock 'n' roll heaven. Throughout their career they have epitomised rock: sex, drugs, booze, the girls, the image and the bad mother fucker attitude. Now 40 years on they are still able to knock out a great album and Bad Magic could well be one of their best. It's an album that characterises everything that is great about Motörhead in 13 songs – they are unstoppable!
Bad Magic is filled with loud (if it's too loud, you're too old! Or possibly too deaf!) aggressive, violent, pounding lyrical imagery and an awesome backing track to match. Victory Or Die is a solid rock song and the Motörhead equivalent of 'keep calm and carry on.' Thunder & Lighteningbegins with a power chord riff reminiscent of Ace Of Spades before Lemmy's spitting vocals tear into you and his reverberating beefy bass rips you apart.
Shoot Out All Of Your Lights, has an epic pummelling soundtrack with a frenetic drumming like war pigs going into battle. Some superb Phil 'Wizzö' Campbell guitar riffs and deep bass power chords growling here too. The Devilfeatures guitar god Brian May on guitar showing that he can do some serious shredding and Electricity is a crowd jumping high voltage rock track. Evil Eyeand Choking On You Screamssees Lemmy playing with his trademark vocals, thanks to some studio trickery. The energy doesn't waver thanks to drummer Mikkey Dee acting as drill master throughout the album with the drumming equivalent of the movie Speed! Teach Them How To Bleedfeatures some nice duel guitar and is classic rock blues come down, but don't worry the pulse rate is still sky high! Till The End slows the pace with a sombre rock ballad, well as close to it as Motörhead get and Sympathy For The Devil is a song that suits Lemmy surprisingly well, this should go down a storm live.
Listening to Bad Magic you wouldn't have thought that this is the band's 22nd album! Despite the bands occasional stalls due to Lemmy's recent ill health, they are a band that are far from over the hill. Motörhead are fearless, Motörhead are rock 'n' roll!