Motorhead - Inferno (2004/2010) 2 LP

Twenty years and one Top Shop T-shirt fad on from their inception, Inferno renews Motorhead's vow to amphetamine-speed rock & roll in its most pure, distilled form. Age has not mellowed them: Inferno boasts a clutch of numbers explicitly dealing with death, murder and suicide, each one executed with the unforgiving confidence and well-honed chops of the master axeman. Weathered by decades of abuse, Lemmy's hoarse bark now sounds as sanded and moulded as a glowering gargoyle, but it suits everything from the murderous, white-hot bass chug of "Killers" to the good-time rock & roll of "Life's A Bitch"--admittedly, not a million miles apart, but that's par for the course here--with ease. Meanwhile, guitar-for-hire Steve Vai guests on two numbers, "Terminal Show" and "Down On Me", but while Vai's name is commonly a byword for guitar-shredding pomposity of the first order, here his ostentatious excesses are neatly compressed into two guitar solos of bracing speed and dexterity. In fact, it's kind of fitting that the only sign of late years comes on "Whorehouse Blues"--an acoustic closer that sees Lemmy wheezing into a harmonica, reviving the old Delta blues in all its sordid, licentious glory. --Louis Pattison