Motörhead - Under Cöver

Motörhead never did reverence, so Under Cöver is a covers album played like a bar brawl. The collection gathers versions recorded between 1992 and 2015.

Pulled together in 2017, after Lemmy's death, the set rounds up covers the band cut for tribute albums, bonus tracks and their own records, plus a couple that had never been released at all. It plays like a portrait of the band as fans, tearing into the songs that shaped them with zero intention of being polite about it.

'God Save the Queen' keeps its Sex Pistols snarl but runs it through Lemmy's gravel, and the Ramones' 'Rockaway Beach' becomes a speed-blurred sprint. The big surprise is David Bowie's 'Heroes', one of the last songs the band ever recorded, delivered with a battered, heart-on-sleeve grandeur that hits hard in hindsight. Metallica's 'Whiplash', meanwhile, gets played back at its authors with twice the menace.

Judas Priest, the Rolling Stones and Ted Nugent all get the same treatment, cranked louder and played dirtier than the originals. Lemmy's voice, a rusty foghorn of a thing, turns every song into a Motörhead song, and the roar never lets up. It's a fitting tribute to a band whose taste was as wide as its volume was high, and a riot from start to finish.