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Motörhead > Live at Brixton Academy > Reviews
Motörhead - Live at Brixton Academy

A great live album, from a great live band - 90%

lordnapalm, February 2nd, 2008

This review is for the 2003 release of “Live At Brixton”. I will use a gauge for which all live Motorhead albums will be measured, “No Sleep Till Hammersmith”. The first thing that makes this album better than Hammersmith is the luxury of having many more years of great music to choose tracks from. They have 25 years of the most face melting rock and roll ever to be played by anyone. This release is also superior in the fact that it is two discs. Sometimes when bands put out double disc releases, such as live and best of comps, there tends to be several filler songs. That’s because a lot of bands don’t have enough quality songs to fill two discs. With Motorhead you could fill five discs and still probably think of a couple that you left off. That’s not to say that I am totally happy with every song that they chose to do in this set. I would say one area where Hammersmith is superior is that it have a couple of old songs that I would have liked to see on this release. Most noticeably is the omission of the song “Motorhead”. The hyper version on Hammersmith is more superior than even the original. The other point where this one lacks is the sound quality. Don’t get me wrong here as far as live albums are concerned this one kills many others in sound and mix. But with regards to Hammersmith it does not have the power that release has. The music sounds a little thinner and the vocals are a little bit too up front in the mix. But hey, it is live! Most all of the classics that you know and love are here with some between songs banter with Lemmy. Including an almost never ending seven minute version of Overkill.

The bottom line is that this is a quality release from a band that deserves all the respect it gets. Regardless of the few minor complaints I had, you could do a lot worse by picking up someone else’s live record instead. This release is a good sampling of songs from 25 years of Motorhead. I give this album 90% rating and I feel that Hammersmith deserves a slightly higher rating of 95%. So either one you choose to get you will, as with most Motorhead albums, be picking up a quality release.