Sonic Boom Killers: The Singles

Although it is not necessarily the most essential Hawkwind package you will ever be offered, Sonic Boom Killers is, nevertheless, among the most sensibly structured, its 18 tracks offering up most (but not quite all) of the band's 1970s singles -- most of which were released at a time when chart success was a very real possibility, a point proven by the opening salvo of "Silver Machine" (a U.K. number two in 1972) and "Urban Guerilla" (number 39 in 1973). That the band did not otherwise especially bother the Top 75 is simply a sorry quirk of fashion -- "Hurry on Sundown" (from 1970), "Psychedelic Warlords" (1974), "Kings of Speed" (1975), "Quark Strangeness and Charm" (1977), and "Who's Gonna Win the War" (1980) all received a modicum of broadcast support, while "Shot Down in the Night" (1980) scratched to number 59 purely on the back of Hawkwind's adoption by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Four singles are absent from this roundup: "Kerb Crawler," "Back on the Streets," and the alter ego Hawklords' "Psi Power" and "25 Years." In their stead, you receive the Germany-only "Lord of Light." The real meat, however, lies in the gathering together of some key material originally available only as B-sides to the above: the excellent "Seven by Seven," "Brainbox Pollution," 1974's live "It's So Easy," and Lemmy's self-fulfilling prophecy, "Motorhead." All have long since been compiled onto other CDs, of course, but their availability on a single disc is certainly some cause for celebration. ~ Dave Thompson