No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith (Live)

One of my biggest fears is that there’s a third Motörhead album.

The first time I saw Motörhead perform was in the living room of those wacky roommates in The Young Ones show on early MTV. I appreciate they exist, but this is not my musical genre of choice.

Every song sounds like Ace Of Spades just with different lyrics.

Metal!

Mid

living at leeds

Fuck yeah, Motörhead!

How many old metalheads put this list together? Good lord this stuff is tiresome.

Sounds like a studio recording. Super interesting to hear a mix of metal, hard rock, and punk meld together. I love the guitar playing, the drums, and the gritty vibes I get listening to this. Rock before it got "glammed" to the max (3.5).

Let's be honest: this is more or less the same song about a dozen times, with slightly varying tempos and riffs. Crunchy guitars, pounding drums, and lyrics bellowed out by a man who sounds like he's drunk a bottle of Jack Daniels every day since he was 30 (because he has) and smoked two packs a day since he was 11 (same). This is a band entirely powered by adrenaline, liquor, and cocaine. They're simple, talented, and tight; not complicated, but very good at what they do. It's the essence of the late 70s and early 80s, distilled down to one loud live album.

Everyone’s sort of touched upon this, but really two Motorhead albums? Basically as a result of ONE song? Seriously though having listened to this I just don’t think there’s enough to differentiate from the studio recordings. It’s not like they’ve tried a really different approach to songs (a la Dylan’s Hard Rain), have incredible energy and improvision that can only be captured in a live album (Deep Purple’s Made in Japan) or through live work and studio tinkering have worked the songs into their best possible forms (Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous). It’s just the studio songs, sounding slightly different, with some crowd noises. It might as well just be a greatest hits album. Cool cover and good title though.

Неплохой альбом по звуку. Стиль пения не для меня, но в целом рев уважаемый, так что тут твердая 4. Снимаю балл за слабое разнообразие и мало сольных партий

Lemmy's voice is iconic. They bring the thump and it would have been a helluva lot of fun to be there. This is not my bag, but it is electric. 7/10 Top song... Ace of spades

A okish metal live album 2/5

This entire album is very samey, the first song is good, but the rest all sound the same, which translates to not that good. I like the energy though.

I'm not so sure we needed two Motorhead albums, but it was fun

Popwerful, good rock!

Heavy Metal, live, 1981 -> 3

Generally, I am not that keen on live albums or Best Of collections being included in this list, but in this instance I reckon this album is probably the best possible showcase for Motörhead. Got to love Lemmy’s choice to pronounce the second B in Bomber.

............this isn't 2Pac!

None of these songs are really notable, and the quality of the live performance doesn't do them any favors.

Gets maximum points just for Lemmy

Я-то и студийных Моторхедов не особо люблю, а тут к чему-то ещё и лайв.

well yeah it's a Motörhead Album. If you like them you like the album. If you like them occasionally you like it a bit. They'll always be a band where I can listen to a few tracks but then it's enough. Also: not a fan of live albums

lemmy is in the bob hoskins category of obviously english dudes where i still always instinctively think they're american. this is cool

It's a great album; "Ace of Spades" and "(We Are) the Roadcrew" are quite good.

Meh, not my thing

Nobody asked for over two hours of Motorhead. Especially not me. But they do sound fairly good live, I will give them that

A smashing live album! I'm quite new to Motorhead this is my first album of theirs. I fully understand why Motorhead saw themselves as rock and roll and closer to punk than the heavy metal guys. I mean this is literally just rock and roll with a shit ton of distortion and an angry bass that is spouting chords at the listener whilst all at a tempo like your running like hell away from something nefarious. Just reading about these guys, they lived the rock and roll experience truest than most bands that refer to themselves as such. Wasn't expecting to like it so much, I think this really is a must-hear album wholeheartedly. Highlight Song/s: "Ace of Spades", "Stay Clean", "No Class", "Bomber" and "Motorhead"

No. 436/1001 Ace of Spades 3/5 Stay Clean 3/5 Metropolis 4/5 The Hammer 3/5 Iron Horse 3/5 No Class 3/5 Overkill 3/5 The Road Crew 3/5 Capricorn 3/5 Bomber 3/5 Motorhead 3/5 Over the Top 3/5 Average: 3,08 There's not really any nuance in the songwriting. Mostly it’s similar guitar riffs and drum sequences. Just really loud.

Pretty cool. I love classical music

i mean that was pretty good and made me wanna be at the show so i guess it worked

Lemme is a icon. The production was iffy on this. The sound seemed dampened.

\m/

Not a Motorhead fan, but they were certainly tight live.

I truly believe live albums are for the folks who went to that show - you are never gonna really capture what it sounds like for those who didn't go. Honestly, as much as I like Motorhead, this alm just sounded like 1 giant song. Granted it was one I didnt mind hearing. 3/5

Motörhead is interesting. I enjoy them in doses but it feels like it is all the same. Liked the live aspect as it added a certain “speed” to each song.

Very heavy, screamy and rebellious type music, to me it’s like a mix of classic rock and punk, some parts in the guitar sound just the slightest countryish.

I didn’t like the voice

rock on

A banging live rock album. ! million miles an hour all the way through with the signature Mororhead sound

Like it 3/5

The most revealing thing about No Sleep ’til Hammersmith may be that I spent quite a lot of the album admiring it while my attention wandered elsewhere. That sounds more damning than I mean it to. As a document of Motörhead live, this is extraordinarily good. The moment “Ace of Spades” starts, the recording makes its case. There is enormous physical pressure in the sound, but almost none of the mush that could so easily have reduced a band like this to an indistinct roar. Lemmy’s bass, Fast Eddie Clarke’s guitar and Phil Taylor’s drums all remain startlingly clear. You get the violence and the architecture simultaneously. And architecture is the important word, because this is a three-piece with nowhere to hide. In the studio you can overdub, double parts, patch holes and quietly repair anything that looks a bit thin. Live, if one person stops doing his job, there is suddenly a bloody great gap where the music used to be. What this album reveals is just how cleverly Motörhead divide the available space between them. Lemmy is only intermittently playing bass in the conventional sense. Much of the time he is effectively the rhythm guitarist, using distorted bass to occupy the harmonic middle of the band and allowing Clarke to move around without the floor disappearing beneath him. When Lemmy does settle into a more conventional single-note line, Taylor often becomes more active and fills some of the missing weight from the drums. The sound is huge, but it isn’t huge because there is lots going on. It is huge because three musicians have worked out how to make every available part do more than one job. This is one of those occasions when a live album actually explains a band. The mythology of Motörhead is all noise, speed, booze and things falling off lorries, but underneath that there is an extremely efficient musical system. The wreckage is surprisingly well organised. Taylor is particularly entertaining. During “The Hammer” I became convinced that he wanted to play faster than Lemmy and Clarke were prepared to let him. Some of the snare hits seemed to be arriving fractionally ahead, as though he were leaning on the accelerator while the other two kept the chassis steady. It was not sloppy. It was funny. There was a sense of one member of the band permanently trying to drag the song into the next bar before everybody else was ready. Then “Overkill” arrives and gives that impulse somewhere to live properly. The opening is absurd. For a moment I genuinely wondered whether I could tolerate another four minutes and forty seconds of it. The title turns out to be magnificently accurate, particularly when the false ending arrives, you think you have survived, and the bastards start again. Lemmy himself has a vocal range akin to a folding electric bicycle with a bad battery. It goes almost nowhere. But this is what happens when you write for yourself. He is not producing songs in the abstract and subsequently discovering that he lacks the necessary notes. He is writing for Motörhead, which is a very clearly defined proposition. His melodies stay within what he can actually deliver, variation comes through attack, phrasing, rasp and rhythm, and the limitation becomes part of the grammar of the band. The same applies to the lyrics. I found myself increasingly resistant to analysing them too closely, because that felt like missing the point. This isn’t an album improved by sitting down with “The Hammer” and attempting to turn it into a treatise. Metal lyrics, punk noise, rock-and-roll mechanics. Enjoy. That punk/metal overlap is important, though. I remember Motörhead particularly appealing to lads who never quite embraced punk, and you can hear why. “Iron Horse/Born to Lose” backs away from the initial assault, breathes much more, and feels considerably more metal. It is almost a Motörhead ballad, which is admittedly an abusive use of the word “ballad”. Then “No Class” comes tearing in with an attitude much closer to the Class of ’77: direct, sneering, impatient, no dragons required. Motörhead never seem particularly interested in deciding which tribe they belong to. That makes it amusing to think of this album existing in the same British pop moment as “Tainted Love”. 1981 was increasingly full of people formed by punk discovering that they actually rather liked pop, Top of the Pops, hooks and colour after all. By the following year Captain Sensible would be at number one singing “Happy Talk”. The old walls were becoming porous. Motörhead sat awkwardly and rather successfully across one of those walls. The oddest musical moment for me came during “(We Are) The Road Crew”. Something in the vocal rhythm was bothering me because it reminded me very strongly of another song, but I couldn’t place it. Then it arrived from somewhere in the back of my head: Grinderman’s “No Pussy Blues”. I stopped Motörhead, put the Grinderman track on, and became more convinced rather than less. The similarity is not particularly melodic. It is the rhythmic structure of the lyrics and the way the verses are organised: short, declamatory phrases, stressed in similar places, with the vocal line behaving almost like another percussion instrument riding the riff. I am not claiming influence. I have no evidence for that. But as a formal resemblance it is uncanny, and it was probably the point during the album when my brain became most animated. That discovery also tied into something else I noticed while listening: the way I hear sung vocals. I have always struggled to decode lyrics without help. I can hear the voice perfectly well as rhythm, timbre, attack, phrasing and pitch contour, but the actual semantic content often refuses to resolve until I have a lyric sheet in front of me. Once I do, it can snap suddenly into focus. The closing “Motörhead” gave me a perfect example. For years I had apparently heard part of the chorus as “remember the name now” and “all right”. Looking at the lyric, I discovered it was “remember me now” and “all night”. And once I had the words in front of me, I could hear them perfectly. Nothing about the recording had changed. The language had simply snapped into place. My version arguably made more sense. This is not really a digression from the album, because with Motörhead it barely matters. Lemmy’s voice works extremely well as an instrument even when the words themselves are only partially accessible. Perhaps that is why I like them best when I am not particularly bothered about what they are singing. The lyric can scroll past. Make it sound like metal. I have actually seen Motörhead live, at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, with The Damned supporting. It was a gloriously unsuitable venue for Motörhead: a posh concert hall full of punks I knew. The Damned made more visual sense there because Dave Vanian could stride around and use the theatricality of the space. Motörhead really required something more physically threatening. The personal weirdness that night came from The Damned having Pinch on drums. Visually, part of my brain kept insisting that I was watching a very good Damned tribute band: there was Pinch, whom I still somehow filed away as a kid, and the singer looked uncannily like Dave Vanian. Close my eyes, though, and there was no ambiguity whatsoever. THE DAMNED. Motörhead were fun. I paid to see them and I was glad I did. But the difference between the band in a room and the band on this album turns out to be crucial. Live, I began to wonder whether my skeleton was going to survive the sonic onslaught. Listening to the album, I found myself wandering off mentally. That is the contradiction I keep coming back to. No Sleep ’til Hammersmith captures the band exceptionally well, but it cannot reproduce the genuinely physical experience of Motörhead happening in front of you. The recording gives you the pressure, the clarity and the speed. It cannot quite give you the HOLY SHIT quality of sharing a room with it. Which leaves me admiring this rather more than I love it. As a faithful representation of Motörhead live, I am not sure what more one could ask. The recording is superb. The trio is exposed and impressive. The sonic attack survives intact. I completely understand why this is a canon album. But it is also the Ronseal of live albums. It does exactly what it says on the tin. There is very little distance between what I expected Motörhead live to sound like and what the album actually delivers. That is its great strength, but it also means that once the proposition has been established, there is not much mystery left for me to pursue. I neither dislike Motörhead nor love them enough to need a live album. I am glad this exists. I am glad I heard it. I am glad I saw them. And I am also quite happy to turn it off now.

extra points for lemmy being from stoke

too monotonous, a tedious listen

theyre so nice giving all those shout outs

Simply just a damn fine piece of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Solid 5 Stars.

It’s a 5. I mean, yeah, the guitar is compressed to hell & it leaves a wall of sound over the entire recording that takes away some of the live synergy of the band. That’s a very fair complaint, and if you’re the type of audiophile who wants a live performance to feel a bit more clean, it’s a justified reason to lower the rating. At the same time, go fuck yourself. This shit fucking ruled. Yeah, the audio bit at me, but I got over it quickly. Lemmy’s vocals are great, translating pretty much 1:1 from the studio, and that goes for the guitar & the drums too. They are 100% in sync for tracks that demand a lot of focus & some really tight timing, and they kill it. Hell, they overkill it. There’s not a moment in this album that’s devoid of energy save for the transitions between tracks, and even then, the crowd’s energy just feels present throughout. I understand the criticism of this being the same general soundscape for 40 minutes. It’s valid. It also doesn’t matter if you can just feel these tracks. I felt every single thing about them, I think. There’s not much more to say; I think it’s a 5. I’m very glad it’s on the list, even if it’s a blatant ploy to get some non-”Ace of Spades” tracks into the list as opposed to putting another studio album. Motorhead was probably best experienced live anyway, so I don’t mind at all.

Pretty cool. I’ve never really listened to Motorhead, but I like it.

Motorhead firing on all cylinders. They're legends for a reason. It's a pretty solid album, but it's definitely Motorhead, so if you don't care for the sound, it will get old very quickly. I dig it, but not as much as the hardcore fans. RIP Lemmy.

Every metal-adjacent fan loves Motorhead and Lemmy. And most of them have never heard anything past Ace Of Spades. I'm one of them. And now I've heard Ace of Spades 18 times in a row. I kid. It wasn't quite that. And I love 2-3 chords and a tempo. But if I've made it this far without them getting into my rotation this wasn't enough to change my opinion.

Hard and loud. Pour quality recording tho, and every song just kind of sounds like ace of spades Standout songs: Ace of spades Bomber

Not a fan of live albums

I didn't hate it as much as I thought and then it kept going, and then it went on some more, and then I started to hate it but still not as much as I would have thought.

Holy speed

It’s Motörhead, it’s fast, it’s loud, and it has bite

2.5+/5

45 minutes of pure rock and roll. This is not for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.

Not a fan of live albums, even if I like the band. 6/10

Pretty good. I’m no super big into live albums but I liked this one.

Honestly nothing wrong with it. Just failed to capture my interest in any way. It’s a perfectly fine fake sounding 80s live album

Listening to Motorhead on the way to watch Edinburgh's premier Weezer cover band, Beezer. Could life get any better? Well, yes, probably but this is an alright listen, noisy, poorly recorded, abrasive and it keeps the tempo high throughout. Lemmy's voice sounds strained and half the songs could be Alice Cooper, but it works well enough. It drags at the run time however, it's a looong album.

Sounds like it was a great concert!

Don't see the point. Yeah ok plenty of rockin' rollin' fun but the list has featured all the best songs already, on Ace Of Spades. And they don't sound significantly different live. Add a bit of crowd noise and some air sirens and a few less exciting tracks and repeat. Tick that one off.

Fast, loud and fun. Before this was only familiar with Ace Of Spades and the Triple H theme from Motörhead, so before this I ended up listened to their Motörhead and Ace Of Spades album to get some appreciation out of this. It’s good metal.

I would have been fun to have been there but not really essential as an album. Great band.

You either like Motörhead or you don't, and this live album is about as Pure Motörhead as you get. It's definitely more substantial than their studio albums, and most of the songs were still pretty good (though got annoyed with "We Are the Road Crew"). If you need something loud, fast, and heavy, there's far worse you can do than Lemmy & Co. (3.5/5)

i don’t like metal but i bet this is cool for those that do

Good energy, fun guitarwork, just not a lot of variety.

Exactly the type of live album im all in on. The performance is great. The crowd is into it and loud and energetic. And that cover makes me think of how cool this show must have been to be at. There is a light rig airplane flying at the crowd. So sick. Good banter from lemme. Like playing thier namesake song 3/4th into the set and saying something to the effect of in case you didnt know. So funny. Just a sick record all around. And im not a huge motor head guy. I like them well enough but not out dressing like a tom of Finland drawing in all leather or anything. I like ace of spades and we are the road crew all well enough. I just got alot out of this performance. It left me with a smile on my face the whole time. It does what it does as well as it could. Still more of a studio album guy but this is pretty close to the top of the heap as live records go.

Sick of live albums. Would just like to hear a good Motorhead perhaps. 2.5

Ace of Spades is a great song. But the rest of this album just sounds like worse versions of Ace of Spades. RIP Lemmy.

I wish the recording was better. That's my only complaint on this album. It's a great showing of them as a band and their live energy. It just needs a better recording. This is a classic Motorhead album, a bit of a greatest hits in my mind, so if you want to listen to Motorhead I suggest this. It's just solid.

Cool album. I was never a big Motorhead fan, but I respect their music and enjoy a few of their songs. Listening to them live on this album was really good to. Energetic and sounded great.

10/10 super fun

I think throwing a live album on this list is usually a pretty bad choice. The recording is never great and it never really sounds like the band intended it to. This album captures the energy of motorhead, along with their well-known songs. While it's good, it doesn't really need to be in the list.

Great

When they announce a "slow song" and then it still sounds exactly the same as the rest

repetitive choruses, alright instrumentals and loud

No fluff, no fuks given.

They are Motörhead, and they play rock and roll.

Heavy, but samey. 3.5

Absolutely insane energy, bet this was fun live.

This is not really a review that requires me to do an intense analytical listening session; I’ve heard it a hundred times or more. It’s not an album that should really require anyone to do intense analytical listening anyway; it’s high-energy, punky, heavy rock, don’t bother yourself about the details, just turn it up and wish you were there at one of the shows where it was recorded. Motörhead at the peak of their 80s strength, performing highlights from their earliest albums, recorded and produced in a manner that captures well what they were doing at the time. It is a formula that could hardly fail given that live is where the band thrived; Motörhead lived on the road and (despite their propensity to live life to its fullest) their controlled chaos as a powerful, performance unit is evident across this document. Done correctly, by experts, there’s something particularly powerful about a trio. I guess fewer “moving parts” must elicit a tighter inter-band understanding and slicker delivery in the players. I know Motörhead transitioned shortly after this to a 4 piece, and while it did work (props to Würzel) eventually they went back to a trio (even more props to Phil Campbell). Though it’s Lemmy/Campbell/Dee for me, I recognise that most still consider the band on “No sleep ‘til Hammersmith” to be the classic lineup. There is no doubt that what is captured on this album is classic Motörhead and many of the songs included feel like their definitive versions.

It all sounds the same. How does his voice not give out?

Really doesn't do anything for me

Don’t really like live albums in general

It’s just not special

Pure punk energy. The loudest band I ever saw.

Too much motorhead in one sitting. But it's okay

never got into Motorhead, it all sounds like the same song to me.

I don't mind Motorhead, but not enough to listen to whole album. This was noisy and so don't get why live albums are in this list...

Love me some Motorhead.

Don’t like this band

Motörhead has their style and they do it well. It kinda gets exhausting after an almost 2 hour album, but this isn't bad per se. Solid 2.5 maybe 3/5. Their vocalist starts to irritate me after a while tho. All their instrumentals are great if not super similar. "Overkill" and "Ace of Spacdes" are CLASSICS. Liked Songs: "Ace of Spades" , "Stay Clean" , "Metropolis" , "The Hammer" , "No Class" , "Overkill" , "(We Are) Yhe Road Crew" , "Capricorn" , "Bomber" , "Motorhead" , "Over the Top" , "Jailbait" , "Too Late Too Late" , "Bite the Bullet / The Chase Is Better Than the Catch"

Even if the songs end up sounding a bit samey I do respect the fact that they were rocking that hard for that long in front of a live audience

Lot of cliches and such but they invented them and have got a lot of energy. Good album

Lenny and the height of his powers

Lemi yay

Yup, sounds like a fun show