Motörhead Album: “No Sleep at All [Bonus Tracks]”

Reviewing live albums is a bit dishonest. Afterall, a review of a live performance should be of a live performance, and I wasn't there. That said, I have heard the RECORDING of the performance and here's what I tell you. The key to enjoying this record is to listen around the music. Lemmy's wisecracking delivers a personalized performance to legions of head-bong-ers strewn about incense-soaked, black-lit, end-of-the-hall dormrooms on the eastern seaboard. (Speaking of black light, listening to No Sleep conjurs images of leatherbound and denim-clad Finnish teenagers stagediving through a thick, midnight blue mirrorball haze of the best Turkish blondesmoke... Uh, that didn't come out quite right). Between sneering his lyrics, Lemmy manages to cough up such petulant aphorisms as: "Everybody born and everybody dies. And we shoulda died a long time ago. But we didn't... we're still here"; "This next song was a big hit for us! Ha, yeah. I've got 10,000 copies at my house"; "it's too f*cking hot in this frozen country"; and my favorite - "This song is new song that we have NEVER played in Finland before. Isn't that exciting! Yes, it is! No, it isn't. Well I don't give a f*ck, we're gonna play it anyway." I have actually put this disc on simply to hear the verbage between songs, and that's something you don't get with Frampton Comes Alive! You may be thinking "Hey, bub - whaddabout da music?" Well, like I said, I wasn't at this show, but it sounds like a characteristically high-energy, volume=11 effort. Production is good, songs are played faithfully to studio cuts, and the set list checks out. But it's the spoken word that sets this record off.

In terms of sound quality, this CD sounds almost like a bootleg. And that is the only way to listen to Motorhead, in my opinion. Raw, loud, lots of hiss. That's the way this band meant was meant to be heard.......

Lots of classic Motorhead songs on here, all of them sounding low-budget, the way they should. To quote Lemmy: "Deaf Forever to the Battle's Din!"

There's no such thing as a "bad" Motorhead album. They ALWAYS deliver. The only thing better than a Motorhead album is a live Motorhead album. Pure rock & roll energy that will kick your [...]. No Sleep At All is not as good as the double live CD Everything Louder Than Everything Else or the classic No Sleep Till Hammersmith. It is, however, easily at least a 4-star CD and better than 99% of the music on major labels from any time period in rock history.