Motörhead
Bad Magic: Seriously Bad Magic
★★★★
SILVER LINING MUSIC. CD/DL/LP
Their final album, released four months before Lemmy’s death in 2015.
“Look down and see the road you’re on/ As if you’re on a marathon”, sang Lemmy Kilmister on Bad Magic’s opener Victory Or Die. Like The Victor comic character The Tough Of The Track, Motörhead’s captain wouldn’t quit until he had to, and this was his fond, fiery adieu; the denouement of his long pact with metal mayhem. Here, that Seriously Bad Magic title suffix denotes the LP’s expansion to include Motörhead’s ballsy, attendant cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, two previously unreleased tracks, and an adrenalised, truly heroic Fuji Rock Festival set from the subsequent tour. The original tracklisting’s snarling, hell-for-leather standouts Teach Them How To Bleed and Tell Me Who To Kill come on like final acts of defiance, but Till The End is more reflective and philosophical, Lemmy’s gnarled equivalent of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.