It seems completely in character that former Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell wouldn’t let a little thing like a global pandemic keep him down. In following up their 2018 debut, The Age of Absurdity, Campbell and his family band—his sons Todd (guitar), Tyla (bass), and Dane (drums), plus their friend Neil Starr (vocals)—recorded We’re the Bastards during the COVID-19 lockdown at their studio in Wales. “We planned last year to have a new album out by the end of 2020 anyway, and in February we were all geared up,” Campbell tells Apple Music. “When the pandemic happened, we just went down to the studio a couple of us at a time, socially distant in different rooms, and made the album.” Produced by Todd Campbell, We’re the Bastards is, as Phil says, “13 tracks and no filler, guaranteed.” Below, the living Motörhead legend comments on each song. We’re the Bastards “That’s the essence of the band, really. The sound on the guitars and bass and drums is so huge. It’s almost a Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin-type riff, when the guitars come piling in again. And Neil came up with a great chorus on that. I’m sure that’s gonna be a great live track when we start gigging again. It’ll probably be our opening song when we start playing live as well.” Son of a Gun “We put a video out for this one a while back. It’s got a pumping guitar riff over the top. It goes pretty fast, and it’s just a great slab of hard rock music. It doesn’t let up, really. It’s another punch-in-the-face sort of thing.” Promises Are Poison “This slows things down slightly, with a killer hook guitar riff on it as well. It just chugs along at its own pace, really, and the guitar hook keeps coming back. There’s plenty of balls in the song.” Born to Roam “There’s a bit of country inflection there, with a hard rhythm-guitar backing—a counterpoint sort of thing. It’s got a great chorus as well, with a bit of a groove on it. You can hear every tom on the drums—nothing’s getting muddied up. I’m proud of that one as well.” Animals “If anything sounds a little Motörhead, it’s probably this one. There’s a different middle eight on it, but it’s straight out of the Motörhead handbook. The guitars and bass are gutsy as hell. It’s just slamming.” Bite My Tongue “This one comes from a couple ideas I had that we put together. It’s two entirely different types of riffs that seem to work together. It’s got a good groove on it, sort of middle tempo. Great drums on the chorus—you can hear the bell ringing on the ride cymbal and everything. This one gets you tapping away.” Desert Song “With 13 songs on the album, we want to lay it back for a song or two, but it’s really taken us ’til song seven on this album. When I came up with the riff, I had ZZ Top in mind a little bit. It reminded me of the hot sun and the desert. I don’t know what the boys got going on at the end there—there’s mixtures of guitar bits and vocals and stuff—it builds to quite a cacophony. So it’s a little bit different, and it gives the listener a little break.” Keep Your Jacket On “It’s a mid-paced stomp with maybe a bit of AC/DC influence in there—that’s a good thing, though. Their album is coming out the same day as ours, actually. There’s a good hook on the chorus from Neil. I titled this one because you get people coming backstage and they immediately start taking their jacket off, as if they’re in for the long haul in the dressing room. A few times I’ve been tempted to say, ‘Oh no—don’t take your jacket off. You won’t be here for long!’ You’re not trying to be rude, but maybe you’ve got 50 people you’ve got to see and you can’t have everyone hanging round.” Lie to Me “This is probably the closest so far that we’ve got to a metal sound, I suppose. There’s a little bit of Sabbath influence there, maybe a little bit of Priest. It’s got three or four different sections on it, which are all cool. It’s a nice heavy one, but we’re not a heavy metal band. We’re closer to classic rock or hard rock, I think. You can call us what you like, really—it’s only a name.” Riding Straight to Hell “This does seem like a Motörhead type of title—Lem liked using the word ‘hell’ a lot, being the hellraiser that he was—but Neil came up with the lyrics. I must say Neil comes from a different school than most of us. He couldn’t name you a Deep Purple album or a Black Sabbath album. I don’t know exactly what music he was brought up with, but some of his lyrics tend to be on the dark side a little bit—which they also were on the first album, Age of Absurdity, which kind of came true.” Hate Machine “We realized we didn’t have a double-bass song, so we did this with the reverse of an old riff I had. And then we added a brand-new riff that I came up with in the kitchen. Todd does a ripping guitar solo in the middle, which is a real heavy section where we double-beefed-up the guitars. It’s pretty different from anything on the album, that one.” Destroyed “That’s a punkish one. We thought we’d put something short and gnarly in there, so it’s a two-minute song, like. We’ve got Harley Flanagan from the Cro-Mags singing a bit of backups on that one as well. He’s an old friend going back 30 years now.” Waves “This is possibly my favorite, along with ‘We’re the Bastards.’ It’s pretty laidback. There’s lots of space in there. It’s a bit Floyd-ish in some bits. Neil came up with the most amazing hooky chorus and lyrics on that. And it starts off with a killer bass groove from Tyla. I think he also came up with the opening riff, and then me and the boys piled some other stuff on top. It goes on for nearly seven minutes, so we thought we’d put that on the end.”