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The best rock bands create their greatest work with their backs against the wall — witness the Rolling Stones — and the legendary British hard-rock powerhouse Motorhead was no exception.
Forty years ago, the band had
seen the dissolution of its classic “No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith” lineup accompanied by a pair of sub-par studio albums, and had been largely given up for dead. But the band’s leader, Lemmy Kilmister, was nothing if not a survivor. He regrouped with a pair of blazing guitarists and thunderous ex-Saxon drummer Pete Gill and, for this album, joined forces with the unexpected choice of producer Bill Laswell, who was well known in experimental-leaning New York rock/jazz circles — and producer Herbie Hancock’s left-field 1983 hit “Rockit” — but seemed an odd fit for Motorhead.
However, Laswell had been experimenting with hard rock at the time, and he came to Motorhead fresh from overseeing the pioneering 1984 rap-rock fusion, John Lydon and Afrika Bambaata’s “World Destruction,” as well as Public Image Ltd.’s fiery “Album,” which united Lydon with a wide-ranging band including guitar wizard Steve Vai, ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker and Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell.
The result of this unlikely union was “Orgasmatron,” certainly Motorhead’s most experimental album and one that drew a polarized reaction from many fans and the band itself — the press materials for this reissue euphemistically state, “The album’s production was the subject of much discussion among the band and their fans” — who said its mix was too cluttered and took the band too far from the basics. But personally speaking, I loved it and still do.
In an era when music fans were much more tribal than today, Motorhead were one of the rare bands who were respected in both punk and heavy metal circles. Like AC/DC, their earlier music was rock and roll stripped down to muscle and bone — scorching guitars, piledriving drums and Lemmy’s vein-bulging roar of a voice — like a Terminator version of Chuck Berry. And on “Orgasmatron,” we got all of that in a more-adventurous sonic setting: The songs are classic Motorhead, but hazy guitar overdubs, percussion and effects swoop in and out of the mix, especially on the closing title track, a cauldron of seething guitars, driving drums and Lemmy’s voice, which is laden with effects that make him sound like Darth Vader and Vecna morphed together. The song is like molten lava in musical form, and includes Lemmy’s best-ever lyrics: “I am the one, Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand/ My image is of agony, my servants rape the land/ Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain/ Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name.” (The song
Subsequent re-releases have punched up the mix, and this new 40th anniversary edition presents not only a remastered version of Laswell’s original mix, but a 2026 remix from the band’s longtime latter-day producer Cameron Webb that clears away some of the haze and presents the guitars and drums in cleaner sound (although to be honest it doesn’t sound radically different). They’ve also cleaned out the vault, adding some rehearsal tapes (which sound like they were recorded on a boombox), an outtake and a BBC session featuring several songs from the album along with the classic “Killed by Death” — as well as Lemmy reading the lyrics to the song “Orgasmatron,” unaccompanied, like some sort of evil poet.
Despite the polarized reaction to the original mix, “Orgasmatron” proved definitively that Motorhead were back, and the band launched into its second golden era in earnest. And the band got back to basics soon enough: Classic-era drummer Phil Taylor returned the following year for the “Rock N’ Roll” album, which marked a return to their usual sound and production, and the band roared off into the sunset, only disbanding after Lemmy’s death in 2015 at the age of 75.
While the bonus tracks here are nice to have but not necessarily electrifying, the remastered and otherwise soup-ed up sound on the original album makes this one of the top reissues of the year — “Orgasmatron” now roars louder than ever.
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