The three years between Another Perfect Day and Orgasmatron were tumultuous ones for Motörhead. They left their longtime label, Bronze, ending their contract there with the awesome double-disc best-of, No Remorse, but no other label seemed interested in picking them up. In Joel McIver’s Overkill: The Untold Story Of Motörhead, Lemmy recalls, “Elektra passed. MCA passed. Epic passed. CBS passed. Chrysalis passed. Everyone passed.” Eventually, the band’s management team set up their own label, GWR (it stood for Great Western Road, where their offices were located), and it was time to make a new album.

Orgasmatron was recorded in London, then mixed in New York, all with Bill Laswell behind the boards. And while there are some really good songs on it, notably “Deaf Forever,” “Mean Machine,” “Ain’t My Crime,” and the immortal title track, the actual sound of the record is bizarre. Laswell has only worked on a few hard rock/metal albums — White Zombie’s Make Them Die Slowly, Iggy Pop’s Instinct, and the Ramones’ Brain Drain are the big ones — and in every case, he’s opted to turn the guitars into a semi-industrial buzz, bring the drums up until they’re a crashing, avalanche-like roar, and fill the remaining space with bass frequencies that may or may not serve the actual song. Listening to one of his rock productions, you always get the feeling that if it was coming through speakers the size of bank vault doors, it would probably sound amazing, but on headphones or a normal stereo, it sounds weak and tinny. There are also weird moments of sonic crudity, like when everything but the drums drops out on “Claw” and the drums themselves sound pasted in, suddenly twice as loud as they were just a second ago. Still, the song “Orgasmatron” itself is so totally crushing that this album remains an essential, if less than perfect, listen.