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Motorhead

A British hard rock group that had a great influence on the development of all heavy music, in particular on the emergence of speed metal, although one can classify its music as the speed metal style only with a stretch. The group's music can rather be characterized as a combination of hard rock, punk rock, and proto-thrash. The group was formed in 1975 by bassist, vocalist, and songwriter Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister, who throughout the entire long existence of the group was its only constant member. Motörhead usually represented a trio. The group reached its greatest popularity in the early 1980s, when the album Ace of Spades (1980) received gold status, taking fourth place in the British hit parade, and the live album No Sleep 'til Hammersmith took first place 5 days after its release. These albums, along with Overkill and Bomber, consolidated Motörhead's reputation as the primary British hard rock band of its time. Although Motörhead's music is often classified as heavy metal, speed metal, or thrash metal, Lemmy did not like such labels and preferred to call his music simply — "rock-and-roll". The themes of the group's songs are most often war, the struggle of good against evil, abuse of power, promiscuous sex, drug abuse, and "life on the road". The group's logo, Snaggletooth (War-Pig), first appeared on an album cover in 1977 and since then has been present in various variations on many of the group's other albums. The logo was invented in 1977 by the well-known rock artist Joe Petagno. The author of the image commented on his creation: "Inspiration? Well, of course, I depicted an enraged bastard! Someone like Lemmy, for example. I studied skull types for a long time — and in the end, I arrived at a wonderful combination of a gorilla, a wolf, and a dog. Plus, of course, horns. Well, and Lemmy added studs, chains, and other equipment".