Bomber is the third studio album by the English rock band Motörhead. It was released on 12 October 1979 by Bronze Records, their second with the label.
Background
By 1979, Motörhead had been together for four years and had amassed a loyal following in both punk and heavy metal circles. After recording an album for United Artists that the label shelved, the band released its eponymous debut LP in 1977, but it was with 1979's Overkill that the band hit their stride. The title track landed in the UK Top 40 and, after appearing again on Top of the Pops, the band returned to the studio that summer with legendary producer Jimmy Miller to record what would become Bomber. However, the band did not have the opportunity to work up the songs on the road, as they had with their previous album. Joel McIver quotes singer and bassist Lemmy in his book Overkill: The Untold Story of Motörhead:
Nonetheless, Bomber would peak at No. 12 on the UK albums chart, their strongest showing up to that point.
Recording
During the recording of this album, Jimmy Miller was increasingly under the influence of heroin, at one point disappearing entirely from the studio and being found asleep at the wheel of his car. The album features the band's first anti-heroin song – "Dead Men Tell No Tales". Miller had produced some of the Rolling Stones most heralded work from 1968 to 1973 but, after struggling through the sessions for 1973's Goats Head Soup, had been shown the door. In the documentary The Guts and the Glory, drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor marvels:
In his autobiography White Line Fever Lemmy states:
The band returned to Roundhouse Recording Studios in London with additional recording taking place at Olympic Studios. This album caught Lemmy at his most ferocious, hitting hard at the police in "Lawman", marriage and how his father left him and his mother in "Poison", television in "Talking Head" and show business in "All the Aces". This album is the first to have a picture of the band on the cover, which features all three members inside a plane. The title track was inspired by Len Deighton's novel Bomber. On one track, "Step Down", Eddie Clarke is featured on vocals.
Release
The single "Bomber" entered the UK singles charts on 1 December 1979, five weeks after the album; the single's initial pressing of 20,000 on blue vinyl was soon sold out and was replaced by black vinyl. The album was released on 12 October 1979 and like the single, was initially pressed on blue vinyl. The Bomber Tour followed, for which a aluminium-tube "bomber" was made; this had four "engines", whereas the plane depicted on the album sleeve (which bore a resemblance to the Heinkel He 111) had two. This lighting-rig could move backwards and forwards, and side-to-side – the first to be able to do so. who was also responsible for creating cover art for, amongst others, Chris Rea for his 1989 The Road to Hell album.
In White Line Fever, Lemmy calls Bomber "a transitional record" but admits "there are a couple of really naff tracks on it, like 'Talking Head.'" In 1980 interview with Sounds, Clarke compared the LP unfavourably to Ace of Spades, stating "Bomber felt wrong. It wasn't all there".
Critical reception
One critic suggests that the album is well regarded by the fans, and packed full of essential Motörhead tracks, with "Dead Men Tell No Tales", "Stone Dead Forever" and the title track itself being "phenomenally good" metal songs, adding that, with the exception of the bluesy "Step Down", the tracks are full of the characteristic sound of the classic line-up of Lemmy, Clarke and Taylor, with Clarke's solo in "All the Aces" described as "blistering" and Lemmy spitting out intentions to "poison his wife" in the life-reflecting "Poison" making it a sound of metal-dripping brilliance.
Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic writes, "There are a couple killers here, namely "Dead Men Tell No Tales," "Stone Dead Forever," and "Bomber," but overall, the songs of Bomber aren't as strong as those of Overkill were. Granted, this is somewhat of a moot point to raise, as Bomber is still a top-shelf Motörhead album, one of their all-time best, without question."
Reviewer Kory Stone of Rolling Stone in a combined retrospective review of Overkill and this album calls it, in a positive light, the "slower, scuzzier sister" of the previous album while also stating that it "Showed that three musicians could play as heavy as any larger-sized band." And in another article in which it included 20 of the bands best songs, "Dead Men Tell No Tales" and the title track are two songs that made the list.
In 2011, Motörhead biographer Joel McIver wrote, "Some think that the effort of writing two killer albums in the space of a year was too much for Motörhead at this early stage, and that Bomber – released on 27 October, seven months after its predecessor – couldn't hope to match up to Overkill".
A special double CD reissue of the album was released in June 2005 to coincide with Motörhead's 30th anniversary tour. The bonus tracks on the second CD, however, have all previously been available. In 2005, Bomber was ranked number 397 in Rock Hard magazine's book of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.