POP MUSIC REVIEW : Motorhead Suffers an Aural Defeat in UCI Gym

Motorhead lives by the sword, or, more precisely, by the sonic truncheon.

Playing at UC Irvine on Wednesday, the venerable British heavy metal band, reputed to be the loudest on earth, died by the sword--or, more precisely, by its own faulty sonic weaponry.

The show in Crawford Hall, a small gym with a stage built into one wall, turned into a loud blur punctuated regularly by screeching feedback from singer Lemmy Kilmister’s microphone. But give Motorhead credit: it was an impressive blur, and the band (call it the Heavy Brigade) kept charging half a league onward, confronting all obstacles head-on as it rode into the valley of aural death that the echoing gym became.

Like Tennyson’s Light Brigade, Motorhead found itself in a fight it couldn’t win. Frustrated by a rented sound system that made it difficult for the four musicians to hear themselves play (putting them in the same boat as the audience), the group retreated after 50 minutes. Lemmy, the ornery-looking bandleader, ended the show by slamming punches at his bass and taking a quick parting jab at his squawking mike.

Before he did, he confessed to the audience that the evening had been a crime (if not quite Crimean).

“I think we played very badly, and I’ll tell you why: We can’t hear what (expletive) we’re doing,” honest Lemmy told the few hundred fans in the house, adding: “If you ever get into the rock ‘n’ roll business, bring your own monitor system.”

Motorhead still managed to churn up an effective din, especially on the tromping “Just ‘Cos You Got the Power.” On that one, Lemmy’s defiantly hoarse voice, which sounds like a death croak under the best of circumstances, got whipped around in a double-guitar maelstrom generated by Phil Campbell and Wurzel Burston. Some metal just sounds better murky.

Two speed metal bands opened. Death Angel, from the Bay Area, played forcefully and with focus, which makes one hope it will some day discover melody. Maybe then the band will be tolerable for more than 10 minutes at a time. Holy Terror, from Los Angeles, was an unholy bore for the most part, although singer Keith Deen showed an impressive set of operatically inclined pipes.

The same three bands play tonight at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.