As heard here, it’s intoxicating stuff. Some of these songs – Overkill, Bomber, Stay Clean, Capricorn, No Class and Metropolis – would be captured in their definitive versions two years later on the live album No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith, the finest concert record of all time. But even in their original forms, recorded to a budget that would have been the opposite of lavish, Motörhead sound like the band who never once told their audience a lie. The playing is blurry and powerful, as are its sentiments. ‘The only way to feel the noise is when it’s good and loud’ is the credo of Overkill, a song so good that it directly inspired thrash metal’s frenzied drumming. And while the quality of the bonus material here may be varied – some of the live entries are, shall we say, a bit scratchy – it is the work of a band who were unbiddable and incorruptible.
In other words, Motörhead were outlaws. Even in 1979 – even, probably, at birth – Lemmy was already the fully-formed icon that he would be recognised as being in the later years of his life. As he sings on Capricorn, ‘I always knew the only way / Is never live beyond today / They proved me right / They proved me wrong / But they could never last this long’. Beat that.
Verdict: 5/5