Nazareth
Cinema

THE REVIEW

Encouraged by the rise of commercial heavy metal (Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Van Halen…), in 1986 Nazareth stopped musically wandering between the possible and the appropriate offered by the eighties and headed towards the only clear direction of "current" hard rock for the time, that is, stereotyped and anonymous, joining many others in the wake of the greats of the genre class, AOR, pop metal, or whatever we want to call it.

Therefore, hyper-compressed and devitalized guitars, rigidly detonating rhythms, very few melodic vocal drones, overly heard among other things, to color the rhythm without affecting it much. Vocalist Dan McCafferty has no problem overshadowing with his strong and muscular delivery this new type of confused and not very dynamic productions, where everything always sounds loud, and thus there is no rhythmic, melodic, harmonic breath. But the pleasure of listening is missing, as without soul & passion, even instrumental, rock ‘n’ roll never provokes the right enjoyment. You shake a bit while listening, maybe, then it passes and goes and leaves nothing inside you.

In short, many fewer synthesizers compared to the albums immediately preceding, and guitars at the forefront, however, with crappy sounds. The pounding of the drums then allows no pauses or nuances… swing and dead notes, but what are they? Full speed ahead toward the wall of sound. The guitar of founding member Manny Charlton is rendered unrecognizable by the production, but also by the musician's lack of inspiration, or rather by the increased conflict with his historical companions, less idiosyncratic than him to market pressures and "new" sounds. In fact, he will throw in the towel a few years later, leaving forever.

The work of the guitar, bass, and drums on 90% of this record turns out to be as anonymous as one can find: logically professional, but very few moments of their mixing tickle the heart and incite the pleasure of the rock-audio enthusiast. For much of the album, just "wood", big attack, big noise, and the riffs are reduced to a minimum, skeletal one might say. Something is saved, for example, the final “A Veteran’s Song,” a foggy ballad with voice and guitar stealing the spotlight, the best episode of the album. I correct myself: the only one.

Nazareth seems to be at their last gasp. However, they will hold strong and recover. The night has to pass, and it will.