9 tracks · 36 min
The seeds of "Razamanaz" were sown in NAZARETH's self-titled debut, and the band perhaps needed to loose the reins a bit on "Exercises" to dash on the unprepared listener with what many consider their finest creation. "Razamanazin' you never expected"? The lightning on the cover is but a slight indication of thunder that lives inside, and there's hardly enough room to breeze once the title track's riff cuts the slack of silence: the sparseness of Manny Charlton's guitar lines and Darrel Sweet's intense beat comes filled with Dan McCafferty's all-encompassing vocal hook and clear statement of intent - "We won't allow you a second to slow down / The moment has come to deliver" - until Pete Agnew's propeller-like bass gets into the rumble for a swirling rock 'n' roll chorus which makes it impossible to sit still. Yet don't get fooled by the "we haven't come to be clever" part, as the quarter and their producer Roger Glover put a lot of thought in the record, and the testament to the group's eventual decidedness would be a new cut of the previous LP's "Woke Up This Morning". But if it wasn't enough for the bluesy pseudo-fatalism - shaped really tragic in the anthemic "Sold My Soul" wi…
