When Axl Rose’s favourite singer Dan McCafferty retired from Nazareth in 2013 after 45 years of lung-busting service, leaving bassist Pete Agnew as the last man standing from the band’s glory days, it seemed as if the game might be up for Scotland’s rowdiest rock’n’rollers.
But not so. Loughborough-born Carl Sentance (formerly of NWOBHM also-rans Persian Risk and also, briefly, Krokus) has filled McCafferty’s boots with impressive gusto.
Surviving The Law, the band’s second album with Sentance, is resolutely loud ’n’ proud in true Nazareth tradition.
And while it falls a long way short of early classics such as Hair Of The Dog, the spirit of the 70s lives on – in the ballsy swagger of Strange Days and Runaway, in titles such as Let The Whisky Flow and Ciggies And Booze, and in the soulful album closer You Made Me, which will surely bring a smile to Dan’s craggy old face.
