There were other contenders for my favourite album of 2011. Nicolas Jaar’s electronic odyssey Space is Only Noise certainly pushes towards imaginative sonic frontiers in ways nobody could accuse Motörhead of doing, and The Death Set, bratty noiseniks from Australia via New York, demonstrated on Michel Poiccard just what a brilliant racket can be made by lacing punk rock attitude with electronic thunder. In the end, though, as other albums came and went, The World is Yours sat in my car stereo’s 10 CD changer from January until December and I hammered it. It gave me the most pleasure of all.
2011 was not kind to me but the host of vulnerable troubadours touting their pain in theatrical broken voices didn’t appeal. If you’re going through hell, keep going, don’t bore me with it to a sub-James Taylor/Jeff Buckley template. The World is Yours, as well as being Motörhead’s best album since 1916, 20 years ago, sticks an unapologetic two fingers up to, well, almost everything. It’s an album that fills me with verve every time.
There’s one naff song, the lame Quo-ish “Rock’n’Roll Music”, but the rest, with Wagnerian Göttererdämmerung spirit, sounds like a last stand, a tight knot of rock’n’roll, metal, punk and hyper-speed rhythm’n’blues. Lemmy is at its heart, sounding world-weary but unapologetic. Full of fire, he growls out cris de coeur such as “Get Back In Line” and “I Know How To Die”, conjures macho Peckinpah brutality on “Outlaw” and doomed, Tolkien-esque mythology on the rip-roaring “Devils in my Head”. From opener “Born to Lose” to the closing “Bye Bye Bitch Bye Bye”, it all emanates invigorating resentful gutsiness.
With Welsh riff-meister Phil Campbell on guitar and Swedish powerhouse Mikkey Dee on drums, Motörhead are as tight as they’ve ever been. They certainly aren’t doing anything new but that’s not always the point, is it? They do Motörhead impeccably and right now their driven grit, their earthed ire, rather than media-friendly irony and i-Phone sleekness, are just what the doctor ordered.
Watch Motorhead deal with the bankers in the video for "Get Back in Line"