No Remorse

You may have noticed by now (or not, doesn’t matter) that there are damn few compilation records rated on this site, also known as Greatest Hits and/or Best Of collections. That’s because most of them suck. No seriously, most of ‘em are redundant, repetitive, and hardly revelatory and often contain material the band in question wouldn’t have released if the record company heads had their family members at gunpoint. But as in most other ways, Motorhead is a different story, and No Remorse is not your average “as seen on TV” product.


Quick background. As 1984 dawned, Brian Robertson was dishonorably discharged from the Motor-ranks, being a gent of vast talent but sporadic execution. Thus, Field Marshall Lemmy recruited two new and generally unknown guitarists to replace him, ex-Persian Risk man Phil Campbell and totally out of the blue character Mick “Wurzel” Burston. This decision made, Philthy Animal Taylor quit the band, leaving Lemmy in the lurch (kind of appropriate; he was nicknamed “the lurch" in Hawkwind days). And so as a sort of re-assessment of Motor-history and preparation for it’s future, a weapons and artillery check was ordered, bolstered by new material as well as dusted-off rarities.


Thus No Remorse is the perfect Motor-course into the band’s early daze, collecting some of the finest hours of their initial thrust (Motorhead, Overkill, Bomber, Ace Of Spades, No Sleep Til Hammersmith, Iron Fist and Another Perfect Day). Sure, these albums are (almost) all stone cold classics unto themselves and feature plenty of material not on hand here, but the cuts that are be dead on, matey. Of the four new cuts, featuring the aforementioned guitar guys and ex-Saxon drummer Pete Gill, “Killed By Death” stands tallest, featuring not only a foundation rattling drum sound, but a heavier, deeper Motor-sound overall (what a difference an extra guitar makes). Also present are cuts from the legendary EP Saint Valentines Day Massacre, the band recorded with fellow Brits Girlschool, the finest number being a cover version of Johnny Kidd and The Pirates oldie “Please Don’t Touch.”


Thus this is the right place to enter the vast and somewhat intimidating Motor-archive, and I must say it was very useful to those of us in the USA at the time of issue, cuz Motorhead stuff was moderately rare to come by here despite the band being huge in England (and Japan and Germany, by the way). Release notes: if you were lucky (and had a full wallet) you could have found a leather bound edition of this collection (seen it, couldn’t afford it). Also I am relatively certain that initial super snazzy CD versions of this release had to edit a few tracks off of the original 2 record set due to running time constraints. And this was the format of the future, eh? A vinyl head like myself cannot help but snicker ruefully at such an ironic turn of events.