Vinyl Record

Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes

Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes on LP vinyl. A 2025 Metal record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP · Metal · 2025

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 2025 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection Metal shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

The Manticore Tapes is a 2025 release built from a 1976 moment, which makes it less a normal studio album than a recovered origin document. In August 1976, after the early lineup had shifted into the Lemmy, Fast Eddie Clarke and Philthy Animal Taylor formation, Motörhead recorded at Manticore Studios in Fulham while the band's identity was still forming. That context is the whole charge of the record: Leavin' Here, Vibrator, Help Keep Us on the Road, The Watcher, Motörhead and Iron Horse / Born to Lose appear as raw working material before the Bronze-era breakthrough gave the trio a cleaner historical outline. Heard now, the value is not polish or finality. It is the sound of a band becoming itself, with Hawkwind residue, pub-rock muscle, punk-era impatience and Lemmy's road-damaged authority still settling into one brutal shape. Released for the 50th-anniversary era, it turns prehistory into something playable rather than merely anecdotal.

The Manticore Tapes matters because it brings the classic three-piece into view before the official canon had fully caught up. For a band whose mythology often begins with Overkill and Ace of Spades, these 1976 recordings make the birth of the sound feel physical, messy and newly audible.

For collectors, this is a context piece with unusual weight: not a replacement for the classic albums, but a document that changes how those albums are heard. It belongs at the front of a Motörhead shelf, where the raw first collision of Lemmy, Clarke and Taylor can frame everything that followed.

Primitive early Motörhead with rough studio energy, bluesy hard-rock roots, punk-speed pressure, Lemmy's already-dominant bass and vocals, and songs still close to rehearsal-room heat.

Recommended for: Motörhead completists interested in the 1976 formation; Collectors who value archival recordings with real historical context; Fans who want to hear the classic trio before the breakthrough albums.

What is the time context for The Manticore Tapes? The material was recorded in 1976 and released in 2025 during Motörhead's 50th-anniversary era. Which lineup appears on The Manticore Tapes? It documents Lemmy, Fast Eddie Clarke and Philthy Animal Taylor at the start of the classic Motörhead trio. Is The Manticore Tapes a polished later studio album? No. Its importance comes from the recovered early-session character and the chance to hear the band's core sound forming.