The Essential

There have been so many Motörhead compilations that the decision as to which one you pick up might come down to whether you're insistent on having one or two of their specific lesser-known songs. This is one of the better ones, however, if only because, as it's a double CD, it offers more material than most of them. (And it is not, incidentally, the same as the similarly titled Essential Noize: The Very Best of Motörhead, which came out on the same label, Metro, just a couple years before this 2007 release; that previous package was a single disc, not a two-CD collection.) If you're one of those fans who thirst for career-spanning overviews, The Essential also offers a wider chronological breadth than some other compilations, its 39 tracks spanning releases from 1977 to 1992, though the bulk of it's drawn from the late '70s and early '80s. Most of the consensus picks for Motörhead best-ofs -- "Motörhead," "White Line Fever," "Louie Louie," "Overkill," "Bomber," "Ace of Spades," "Iron Fist," "Shine," "Killed by Death," and the cover of Johnny Kidd's "Please Don't Touch" (actually Motörhead with Girlschool, and credited to "Headgirl") -- are here, though some may quibble with the absence of cuts like "No Class" and "Jailbait." Though not overly comprehensive, the liner notes give satisfactory discographical details and comments about every track. ~ Richie Unterberger|