Motörhead

Kiss of Death (Sanctuary)
by Scott Hefflon

The bio sez “death, taxes, and Motörhead,” and that’s about right. I dread yet another Motörhead release like I do tax season, but it’s never as bad as I think, once I dig in. These guy have been cartoons for a couple decades now, never quite rebounding from the “anthem metal” of the late ’80s, like Judas Priest singing teen rebel anthems when they were almost 40. I’ll never recover from Airheads, a funny movie, as long as you don’t realize Motörhead and Ice-T were driving another nail in the coffin of hard rock. And then another decade of lousy “phoned-in” cover and tribute appearances, enough so you’d rather hear a knock-off of “Sweet Home Alabama” in a KFC commercial (so they don’t have to pay for the real thing, which hopefully someone refused them the rights to, no matter how much greasy-fingered corporate money they were offered). Yeah, there are a few tunes on Kiss of Death worth listening to more than once, but nothing to go searching through your CD rack (or iPod menu) for. While not as lecherous as some other “old guy” croaking about bad girls, “Christine” is part cool stripper rock, but also a little autopilot and cliché. Long as it’s not 35 year old rock hags “jiggling” a bit more than they did a decade ago, toss this on at a party and have people remark “hey, Motörhead is still pretty bad-ass, huh?”
(www.sanctuaryrecords.com)