If you don’t like Motörhead this won’t change your mind, and if you do then you’ve got all this stuff 101 times already.

Like a pharaoh’s tomb the Motörhead back catalogue has been systematically plundered over the years, and ‘Aces Up My Sleeve’ continues the tradition. Supposedly a celebration of the band’s 35th anniversary – the newly-unemployed Lemmy first lined up alongside guitarist Larry Wallis and drummer Lucas Fox in the summer of 1975 – the album features twenty tracks covering Motörhead’s first ten years of releases. So sidestepping stuff that was recorded and shelved, the album chronologically kicks off with their 1977 7” ‘Leaving Here’ (although never released as a single in its own right in the UK, instead appearing in a Stiff Records box set) and concludes with ‘Eat The Rich’ from 1987’s disappointing ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ album.

 

As you might guess from the title the album features all the aces and familiar faces – ‘Bomber’, ‘Killed By Death’, ‘Stay Clean’ and of course ‘Ace Of Spades’ – with only really ‘Nothing Up My Sleeve’ from ‘Orgasmatron’ popping up as a bit of a surprise. If you’re going to put together a Motörhead ‘best of’ the tracklist pretty much writes itself (the hardest bit is probably trying to find another way to work ‘aces’ into the title), as does a review of such an album: if you don’t like Motörhead this won’t change your mind, and if you do then you’ve got all this stuff 101 times already. Still, it’s a handy compilation to stick in the car stereo.

John Tucker