Following ‘The World Is Ours – Vol 1 – Everywhere Further Than Everyplace Else’ released last year, Motörhead, a British institution in Metal and Hard Rock, will release a second DVD on multiple formats documenting their successful ‘The World Is Yours’ tour. The basic DVD comes with three shows that include their full Wacken Open Air performance, their UK Sonisphere Festival appearance and what is something of a crowd spectacular, their Rock In Rio appearance, all recorded in 2011. If this is not enough for your Motörheadbangers, then you need to check out superfans Robert & Mick’s impressions of the Wacken Open Air Festival.
I actually watched Robert & Mick’s impressions first, you see them moving through the crowd and the pissed metal fans perform like stereotypical seals in front of the camera, especially the ones not in Motörhead attire. The thing I like most with this is the short snippets with the three band members, I especially like Lemmy’s backstage fruit/slot machine and overall their comical and more human nature rather than just portraying these gents as the rock legends that they actually are and what everyone expects them to be. I won’t say anymore, that’s for you to buy and enjoy, but I will say that in general the Wacken toilets are probably the best around as a festival goes, but not like those backstage, these are something else!
The Wacken Show itself, starts out with Lemmy proclaiming “We are Motörhead, and we play Rock N’ Roll”…the Rickenbacker bass thumps into action and you are given an ‘Iron Fist’ right in the face. The journey continues with multi camera angles from various viewpoints, but I do feel you are missing some of the atmosphere here, the camera seems rather far away in general, and I do get pissed off with the second Wacken stage doing lighting checks every now and again. However, the show itself is magic. If you have ever seen Motörhead at Wacken, then you know it’s really bloody loud so you may be tempted to crack up the TV to get a real sense of this bands purpose. Visually, when close ups occur they do pick out the intricate carving detail of Lemmy’s bass, right before ‘Stay Clean’ that really highlights a cool bass sound and the exceptional live sound quality. There is one visual before ‘Metropolis’ that you see the crowd almost in still life, there is a circle in the crowd, not yet filled with bodies, the fair few crowd surfers visible seem like they are motionless just for a second, it’s a tranquil moment…of course this poignant visual is utterly smashed to pieces when the track starts! I have seen a few Motörhead shows and I have to say, the Wacken sound guy has it nailed and it is not often that you see a perfect vision of the full ‘Bomber’ rig (something where the wide camera angles works in this instance), see that mother fly, I am sure Mikkey is hoping that the cables are strong enough as it manoeuvres itself within a few feet above his head! Closing with my favourite track ‘Overkill’, the Wacken crowd and the band deliver on every front.
So moving onto Sonisphere (England), first impressions are of its much smaller stage, secondly it’s in daylight and thirdly, the crowd are asleep! But before any of this happens and before the band plays any music, they pay tribute to their fallen guitarist Würzel who died only the day before this show. I always find Lemmy and Motörhead’s respect and admiration for their musical comrades most genuine, this is no different. So, a much shorter 6 song set is presented, and better presented mainly due to the camera angles being much more intimate, although they do miss a few shots of the voluptuous fire breathing woman during ‘Killed By Death’. It takes drummer Mikkey Dee to stand up above his kit to finally get some crowd reaction and of course their most commercial and signature tune ‘Ace of Spades’ does this easily.
Before I even pressed play on this DVD, I thought the Rock In Rio scenes would be epic, and epic IS the word…the world is truly theirs, this is 100,000 people inside of a massive festival set up with a really cool backdrop. Limited in numbers, the tracks are as proven on most of this DVD set, to be a cool mix of current and classic material. Camera angles are like the Sonisphere show, tight and intimate, the sound is not as good as the Wacken show, but the sheer size of the show is mind boggling.
This is a nice keepsake if you attended these shows and for those who did not, it’s another collection of live shows that are worth their weight in sweat and temporary deafness right in the comfort of your home or laptop or wherever you chose to enjoy this DVD. Available as a digipack – DVD + 2cd’s, a double disc CD only, a double vinyl gatefold (WOA show only), blu-ray and finally as a massive box set, this is something that is special and far from your basic DVD package. This is Motörhead and they do play really loud rock n’ roll!
(7/10 Paul Maddison)
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