Disco de Nazareth: “Expect No Mercy [UK Bonus Tracks]”

When I first heard this album,, It was a must have !! But finding it has been a chore.... A very good mix of hard hittin' , easy slidin' & bad-ass bluesy sounds. Absolutely one of their best!!

This album rocks from start to finish! Bluesy rock guitar slathered in a cynical, take no prisoners vocal delivery. This is a powerhouse! If 'Revenge Is Sweet' doesn't get you pumping your fist in the air and singing along you may be deceased. Seriously. Just humor me and double check, ok? 'Shot Me Down' is a bittersweet, subdued rocker very much in keeping with the pervasive themes of betrayal and abandonment that run just under the surface of The Rockin' Scotsmen's music. If 'Mercy' were redefined as 'the quality of sucking', rest assured you can expect none of it here!

Back when Nazareth was putting out 2 albums a year, you could only expect so much. This was a good album, though.

The entire first side is great, the fast paced title track, the powerful chugging blues of "Gone Dead Train"

(although it almost sounds like "donkey train")

The trance like "shot me down" show casing Dan's more melodic vocal side,and the faster paced "revenge is sweet" and "gimmie what's mine" are all solid tracks.

Side two is weaker, although for pure guitar and vocal raunch "kentucky fried blues" is unmatched in the Nazareth catalogue. "place in your heart" was another attempt to generate a pop friendly radio tune, it is kinda silly and kinda good.

The bonus tracks are interesting from a "historical view" but sound pretty rough, like they were demos and rushed.

All in all, like many Nazareth efforts, if you grew up with this record as a teenager, it will have a special place in your heart!

Nazareth seemed to be getting back to their hard rock roots but let's face it; there was no `Razmanaz' or `Hair of the Dog' in the pipeline. Yes the band was still producing quality hard rock but `Expect No Mercy' was no better or worse than the two records that immediately preceded it. The title track is a capable rocker in expert hands but again it is not at the level of earlier band triumphs. I would agree that "Shot Me Down" is one of their better ballads and "Kentucky Fried Blues", "Gimme What's Mine" and the "Busted" cover are all interesting tunes but nothing really all that memorable. The liner notes are kind of funny; describing the band as hard rock's or metal's last bastion of hope during the punk onslaught totally ignoring the fact that some of the best and heaviest early metal came out in the mid to late seventies (Priest, AC/DC, UFO and Motorhead to name a few) and Nazareth at this point in their careers were NOT metal. Collecting the later output of bands like Nazareth is a risk collectors take but most of us know that whether we like the band a lot or not, the creative wheels have lost their collective. So listen to `Expect No Mercy' with that in mind and you may enjoy...but `Hair of the Dog' it ain't.