Motörhead’s follow-up to Overkill was recorded only six months after its predecessor was released, and hit stores before year’s end. Unfortunately, this meant that the songs on Bomber weren’t as road-tested as the earlier material, and producer Jimmy Miller was suffering from a debilitating heroin habit that maybe didn’t help the production process. Still, it’s a fierce, vitriolic album featuring a few classics (the title track, “Stone Dead Forever,” “Dead Men Tell No Tales”) and some of Lemmy’s most pointed lyrics.

Motörhead’s lyrics have rarely been mindless space-fillers. Lemmy’s a sharp, well-read guy who’s got a lot on his mind, and on Bomber, he tackles a variety of social ills in a way that punks could easily relate to. “Talking Head” savages the vapidity of TV; “All The Aces” rants against the way the music business is stacked against the artist; and “Dead Men Tell No Tales” is, somewhat ironically, a diatribe against heroin. But the most surprising song, lyrically, is “Poison,” on which Lemmy inveighs against his father for abandoning him and his mother. Not exactly typical subject matter for a blazing hard rock song, but Motörhead have always surprised listeners.

As on previous albums, the music on Bomber mixes fast and slow songs — “Lawman” and “Sweet Revenge” are slow burners that let Eddie Clarke stretch out. Also worth noting: Clarke’s first lead vocal on a Motörhead song, on “Step Down.” According to Lemmy, he’d been complaining so much about the bassist getting the majority of press attention that he said, “Right, you’re gonna fucking sing one on this album.” Clarke’s voice is much cleaner than Lemmy’s, but the song still fits well within the album; it’s not a speed bump, like when Jimi Hendrix let Noel Redding tuck “Little Miss Strange” into the middle of Electric Ladyland. But the album’s high point is definitely the epic (nearly five minutes!) “Stone Dead Forever,” which allows both Lemmy and Eddie to stretch out, with multiple guitar solos and extended bass breaks, as well as a more conventional, Hawkwind-speed rock backbeat. It’s a classic headbanging anthem, one of Motörhead’s best songs ever.