Bomber

Bomber was made quickly after Overkill, and the band had no chance to play the songs on the road first. Lemmy later said he wished they had played them on stage, as they did with Overkill, because three weeks on the road would have made the record less slick. Jimmy Miller produced again, at Roundhouse Recording Studios in London, with extra recording at Olympic Studios, and the sessions took place in the summer of 1979. The band also played the Reading Festival during that time.

Lemmy turned on the police in Lawman, on television in Talking Head and on show business in All the Aces. The title song was inspired by Len Deighton's novel Bomber. On Step Down Clarke sings lead. Lemmy said Clarke had been complaining that Lemmy got all the limelight, so he told him to sing one. It is the first of their albums with a photograph of the band on the cover.

Adrian Chesterman illustrated the sleeve, with the three members in the gunner positions of a Heinkel 111 in the Blitz. Lemmy insisted the plane be German. Chesterman built an Airfix kit of the Heinkel and sprayed it black to get the lighting right, and a chrome Snaggletooth sits on the side of the plane. The sleeve was so striking that the band asked for a lighting rig to match, a forty-foot aluminium-tube bomber with four engines that moved back and forth and side to side.

The album was released in October 1979, first on blue vinyl, and reached number 12 in the UK, then the band's strongest showing. The Bomber single entered the chart on 1 December and peaked at 34. Lemmy called the record a transitional one and thought a couple of tracks, Talking Head among them, were naff. Clarke, speaking to Sounds in 1980, said it felt wrong and was not all there. Rolling Stone's Kory Stone, reviewing it alongside Overkill, called it the slower, scuzzier sister.