Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: April 15, 2022
Production: Nazareth
Album length: 48.10 min.
Genre: Hard Rock / Rock’N’Roll
Rating: 8.5/10
No two ways about it. Nazareth. Yes, the very same Nazareth, one of the most important figures in rock and roll, from Dunfermline, Scotland, are still going strong more than 50 years after their debut studio album came out. Nazareth? Yes. Without Dan McCafferty. Come again? How can they even be the same Nazareth? They can’t be. But in an age of boundless “correctness,” anything goes and everything is acceptable. They really can’t be Nazareth anymore, even though Nazareth in the McCafferty-less era have patched up a lot of things very, very cleverly, and in a way that, if nothing else, justifies carrying on a legacy that’s otherwise unattainable with McCafferty in the lineup. Let’s come clean right from the start. A confession about “conditional palatability.”
Even though “Surviving The Law” is an excellent album. Brilliant. But Sentance isn’t McCafferty, and Pete Agnew and his two companions, guitarist Jimmy Murrison and drummer (and Pete’s son) Lee Agnew, aren’t really looking for that, nor do they want it. Let’s be honest. Changing the name would have felt right in general. But then you start weighing it up again. What would the turnout at the shows be like if you gave up a name that big? However you look at it, Nazareth live on. What they’re making today without McCafferty, they’re doing very well. Yes. Very well. The predecessor “Tattooed My Brain” (2018) proved it too, and it somehow helped the band “survive and stick around.”
Unlike its very good, if not downright great predecessor, “Surviving The Law” is a much more relaxed and carefree continuation of the story of this rock ‘n’ roll legend from the Scottish Highlands. And that’s a good thing. Carl Sentance sings the way only he can. He ties in wonderfully with the rock ‘n’ roll point that Pete Agnew and his crew have always followed. The sound is recreated to perfection. In other words, all you need to do is swap Sentance for McCafferty again and you get classic old-school Nazareth. The production, the sound itself, especially Jimmy Murrison’s guitar phrasing, and the contrast between the building blocks of the sound. Nazareth through and through. Every now and then, especially when you run into the multi-part vocal harmonies that dress up the choruses of some songs, like Mind Bomb, those moments on the new album evoke the energy of the band’s pre-Sentance era with uncanny success.
In short, if we subtract the change the band and its audience have been living with since 2014 or so, which is still far from trivial, everything else is right where it should be. The band has once again shaken out a sackful of fiercely biting rock ‘n’ roll riffs, the kind that only musicians from the generation that put hard rock on its feet can still serve up (Pete Agnew – listen to his bass rattling in the incredibly razor-sharp Ciggies & Booze – sounds like a Nazareth song they forgot to record with McCafferty back in the mid-eighties). Keep in mind that Pete, Lee and Jimmy have been playing together for more than twenty years, and as a result they’ve become a hard rock fortress that fits together almost flawlessly.
Surviving The Law is an excellent album. However you slice it. A combination of raw essentials, where rock’n’roll carelessly flirts with elements of blues and boogie too. Inventive riffs tease the true hard rock fan from every side. A song like Psycho Skies is bursting with a fierce atmospheric twist as you follow the verse and then the explosive chorus melody. The album has a constant rhythmic stampede, and moments where Nazareth would “soften up” even for a second are nowhere to be found this time. Even though the album carries a “fat and long” fourteen new tracks. Yet the whole thing doesn’t bore for a moment. The adrenaline rush and the surplus of testosterone never run out. And I dare to write that even considering this band released its debut studio album back in 1971. As incredible as it sounds, the quartet, using the name Nazareth and with the strengths of “Surviving The Law,” remains, even in 2022, a legitimate and credible continuation of the story of the Scottish giants of rock ‘n’ roll. And by the way. Carl Sentance is a vocal story all his own. Top-notch in every way.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Strange Days
2. You Gotta Pass It Around
3. Runaway
4. Better Leave It Out
5. Mind Bomb
6. Sweet Kiss
7. Falling In Love
8. Waiting For The World To End
9. Let The Whisky Flow
10. Sinner
11. Ciggies And Booze
12. Psycho Skies
13. Love Breaks
14. You Made Me
Lineup:
Carl Sentance – vocals
Jimmy Murrison – guitar
Pete Agnew – bass guitar, backing vocals
Lee Agnew – drums
