Rampant

Scoring hat-trick is a tricky feat, especally when the concert road doesn't seem to end, so "Rampant" might add some anger to the recycling of its predecessor's title yet fails to reproduce the moulden whole of "Loud 'n' Proud". For NAZARETH the problem lies in the perception, though: the fans have always regarded the band as purveyors of hard rock while the Scots' horizons are much wider than that. That's why their fifth LP tries to lay the heavy blueprint onto the stylistic scale of "Exercises" with quite a mixed result. It tends to be almost appalling in the finale, the prog rock cocoon pulled over the pairing of THE YARDBIRDS' "Shape Of Things" with the impressive HAWKWIND-like instrumental "Space Safari"; still, in the slightly humorus "Jet Lag" the rifferama pulls the touring drift down to bluesy earth and introduces the vocoder, thus sowing seeds for both "Telegram" and "Hair Of The Dog". More so, the album launches as usual, with a streamline, if sharp, rock 'n' roll of "Silver Dollar Forger" the guitar of which comes cosmic, too, in the second part of the track, but in the first half its strum sets the tone for some rockabilly fare to follow.