Someone mashed up Space Oddity with Ace of Spades. And it’s pretty cool. Bowie’s lyrics on top of the faster Motorhead rhythms was interesting, which got me scoping around for more metal Bowie covers, and there are a few, according to MetalSucks. It’s only a few, and most seem to be alright. I’d be interested to hear more power metal covers, or maybe speed/thrash, something that gets the vampiness but plays at 10 times the speed.
Anyway, here’s Ace of Space:
And the covers:
MAAAAAN. So Monday, Lemmy passed away, and metal has lost yet another giant. I have to assume he’s in heaven wrestling god or something.
This post will be all things Lemmy & Motörhead, because of course it has to be. I was not aware of his membership in Hawkwind until recently, because I’m bad at metal. But their bluesy sound is pretty interesting with Lemmy’s bass tossed in there. Proto-metal is so great, it’s like the slabs of raw ore ready to get pounded and reformed into crazy new things. There’s a violin and saxophone in this!
Motörhead even did Rolling Stones covers! And much like other metal covers of popular songs, I prefer this one to the original. I think it’s his voice, or the mix putting his vocals not at the forefront, but it makes the song have kind of a foreboding feel. Like he’s a guy who’s seen it all, and he’s still ready to kick your teeth in with a bigass metal riff.
There may be six or seven versions of Ace of Spades posted up in here. The first one is from 2010, with Slash & Dave Grohl joining him. I have to imagine that, wherever you happen to be, if Lemmy calls and asks you to sit in on a set, you get your ass there.
Most pro wrestler intros are cheesy schlocky whatever. Except for HHH. Motorhead wrote a song for him, and performed it a bunch of times at events. Having watched WWE through the attitude era, I’ve heard this song more times than I can imagine, and it’s still great.
There aren’t many bands that keep the bass at the forefront anymore. I like to think it’s because they hear The Bomber and realize their bassist will probably never reach this echelon, so they just tune them out of the mix.
Motörhead’s sound encompasses hard rock, heavy metal, punk, you name it. And then you get dirty bluesy rock with classics like Damage Case.
And the most 1980’s music video ever for Killed by Death. I’m pretty sure if this showed up on Beavis & Butthead there’d just be a lot of them yelling YES.
And finally, the original video for Ace of Spades. There aren’t many songs I can identify by the first note. This is one of them. The distortion is so distinctly Motörhead that you have to know it. I guess you could mistake it for Iron Fist.
Oh and here’s Iron Fist.
Lemmy was so influential that one of the Koopa kids in Mario 3 was named after him!
Motorhead does all sorts of awesome stuff, like putting umlauts on random letters in their name. They also do a totally badass cover of Judas Priest’s Breakin the Law. And here it is!
THERE IS A ROBOT BAND AND THEY KNOW HOW TO PLAY ACE OF SPADES! This is probably the most amazing and terrifying thing I’ve seen since those animatronic mouse monsters played music at Chuck E Cheese when I was 5.
Thanks, Engadget!