Rancid have dropped their cover of Motörhead‘s “Sex and Death,” a final preview of Killed By Deaf – A Punk Tribute to Motörhead prior to the album’s October 31st release.
The cover choice is an apt one, as “Sex and Death” — from the 1995 album Sacrifice — sounds like it could have been written by a punk band like Rancid. It clocks in at two minutes, and you can transpose the respective barks of Lemmy Kilmister and Lars Frederiksen to either version of the song. Frederiksen and company punk it up even more, though it really isn’t too far off from the recording Motörhead laid down in the mid-’90s.
“It’s like, it’s the perfect Motörhead song for me,” said Frederiksen of “Sex and Death,” via a press release. “You know as well as I do how much of a big Ramones fan Lem was. And it sounds to me like his take, Motörhead doing the Ramones. But there’s that little itty bitty guitar solo there. And it was the most Rancid style song that Motörhead did that I thought it’s close enough to like a song we would write.”
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That makes two covers we’ve heard from the tribute album, the other being Pennywise’s take on “Ace of Spades.”
The rest of the tribute comp features covers by The Bronx, Lagwagon, FEAR, GBH, and more. The closing track, an unearthed collab between Lemmy and The Damned playing the latter’s “Neat Neat Neat,” was released when the album was announced back in September.
Pre-order Killed By Deaf – A Punk Tribute to Motörhead via this location, and stream Rancid’s cover of “Sex and Death” below.