We Are Motorhead And 25 & Alive (2000–2001)

In 1999 Motörhead made a tour of the states between 20 April and 2 June, before going to Karo Studios in Brackel, Germany to record their next album, We Are Motörhead, which was released in May the following year. During the time the album sessions took place, the band played at venues around Europe, the first of which was at Fila Forum in Assago, near Milan, where Metallica's James Hetfield joined the band on-stage to play "Overkill". In October and early November, the band toured the states with Nashville Pussy. Throughout the rest of November, the band conducted their European 'Monsters Of The Millennium' tour with Manowar, Dio and Lion's Share, ending the Millennium with two shows at the London Astoria. The two shows were billed under the Kerrang! "X-Fest" banner and during the second show guest vocals were provided by Skin from Skunk Anansie and Nina C. Alice from Skew Siskin for "Born to Raise Hell", and Ace from Skunk Anansie played "Overkill" with the band.

In May 2000, the release of We Are Motörhead and the single from it, "God Save the Queen", coincided with the start of the band's 'We Are Motörhead' tour across South and North America during May and June, with a further nine shows across in Europe in July. Shows in the USA and France were followed by the release of a double-disc compilation album, The Best Of, on 12 September. Four dates in Japan preceded the band's 25th Anniversary concert on 22 October at the Brixton Academy in London, where guest appearances were made by "Fast" Eddie Clarke, Brian May, Doro Pesch, Whitfield Crane, Ace, Paul Inder and Todd Campbell. The show also featured the return of the Bomber-lighting rig. The event was filmed and released the following year as the 25 & Alive Boneshaker DVD, and the CD of the show, Live at Brixton Academy, was released two years after that. Lemmy states the reason for the DVD as wanting "to record it for the posterity or whatever it is. I nodded off through the tenth anniversary, we never did anything on the twentieth, so the twenty-fifth made sense."

A tour of West and East Europe followed the anniversary concert, taking the band through October, November and December. The schedule for the Eastern European tour was quite brutal, involving two eighteen-hour drives back-to-back and little time off, at the Warsaw venue the band did not arrive until eleven o'clock and the crew were still loading into the venue at one in the morning, while the fans waited.