Customer Reviews

Expect No Mercy

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The is one of the straight and narrow Nazareth's albums.
Pretty heavy and energetic but sweetened with a couple nice
songs such as "place in my heart" and "You shot me down".
King horses is just a great song.I wouldn't agree that "Close enough to rok,n,roll" was experimental at all it was more heavy weight album.Expect no Mercy though is following the other album
wich is Playin' the Game and it is the middle between that one and No Mean City.I give it only 4 stars because there's no surprises, just pure Nazareth, but I guess that's why we all love this band for such a long time.
George Korneyev

When I first heard this album,, It was a must have !! But finding it has been a chore.... A very good mix of hard hittin' , easy slidin' & bad-ass bluesy sounds. Absolutely one of their best!!

EXPECT NO MERCY is yet another great Nazareth CD, with hot singing and playing, and great songs to boot. "Revenge Is Sweet" and the title track are great songs about standing up for your rights and not taking garbage from anyone, and the ballad "All The King's Horses" has a cautionary message that inspires me to look at pictures of attractive female celebrities as a deterrent to self-indulgence. This album is a must-own.

This album rocks from start to finish! Bluesy rock guitar slathered in a cynical, take no prisoners vocal delivery. This is a powerhouse! If 'Revenge Is Sweet' doesn't get you pumping your fist in the air and singing along you may be deceased. Seriously. Just humor me and double check, ok? 'Shot Me Down' is a bittersweet, subdued rocker very much in keeping with the pervasive themes of betrayal and abandonment that run just under the surface of The Rockin' Scotsmen's music. If 'Mercy' were redefined as 'the quality of sucking', rest assured you can expect none of it here!

I bought this CD for my aunts birthday. She loved this CD as a teenager and it brought back great memories for her., This CD is very rare. It was not originally realeased in the US. I found this copy from a German seller. Very hard to find but after searching amazon came through again!

Back when Nazareth was putting out 2 albums a year, you could only expect so much. This was a good album, though.

The entire first side is great, the fast paced title track, the powerful chugging blues of "Gone Dead Train"
(although it almost sounds like "donkey train")
The trance like "shot me down" show casing Dan's more melodic vocal side,and the faster paced "revenge is sweet" and "gimmie what's mine" are all solid tracks.

Side two is weaker, although for pure guitar and vocal raunch "kentucky fried blues" is unmatched in the Nazareth catalogue. "place in your heart" was another attempt to generate a pop friendly radio tune, it is kinda silly and kinda good.

The bonus tracks are interesting from a "historical view" but sound pretty rough, like they were demos and rushed.

All in all, like many Nazareth efforts, if you grew up with this record as a teenager, it will have a special place in your heart!

I am glad to hear about the newer release of this disc with the alternate tracks on it. that's going to rock. This one though is pure vintage rockin by the scottish masters. It's hard blues rock and straight metal melodic style and it's alot of fun. It has two wonderful ballads on it. It's not as great though as the next release 'no mean city' but it's certainly better to me than 'play n the game' which is a fine rocker. The band was putting out really solid records during the seventies and I don't think one of them is bad. Their early stuff is more ecclectic but it's GOOD rock although by this time they were putting out top notch metal rock that was well written and pulsating. It's different than 'hair fo the dog' in my opinion more straightforward like the other reviewers said. But common this is a great metal cd! I don't think there's one song on here that's not excellent music of it's type. The ballads are better than most bands too. "you shot me down' is a classic song by any standards, it could be remade into a number of styles it's that good. Of course 'expect no mercy' rocks hard and the boys played very well on this one. In the 80's they'd experiment with new wave hard rock mixture and do that well even. But this was still the band at it's peak. Savage, and well focused. the bonus tracks here are different than on the new 2010 salvo edition! these are the versions on this the eagle version , a few may be the same but most are not, 'Greens' (B-side), 'Desolation Road' (B-side), 'Gone Dead Train' (Edited Version), 'Expect No Mercy' (Alt version), 'Place In Your Heart' (Alt Edited Version), 'Kentucky Fried Blues' (Edited Version) & 'Expect No Mercy' (Live). so you now have to have both version for the rare songs on here.

Nazareth seemed to be getting back to their hard rock roots but let's face it; there was no `Razmanaz' or `Hair of the Dog' in the pipeline. Yes the band was still producing quality hard rock but `Expect No Mercy' was no better or worse than the two records that immediately preceded it. The title track is a capable rocker in expert hands but again it is not at the level of earlier band triumphs. I would agree that "Shot Me Down" is one of their better ballads and "Kentucky Fried Blues", "Gimme What's Mine" and the "Busted" cover are all interesting tunes but nothing really all that memorable. The liner notes are kind of funny; describing the band as hard rock's or metal's last bastion of hope during the punk onslaught totally ignoring the fact that some of the best and heaviest early metal came out in the mid to late seventies (Priest, AC/DC, UFO and Motorhead to name a few) and Nazareth at this point in their careers were NOT metal. Collecting the later output of bands like Nazareth is a risk collectors take but most of us know that whether we like the band a lot or not, the creative wheels have lost their collective. So listen to `Expect No Mercy' with that in mind and you may enjoy...but `Hair of the Dog' it ain't.

Great recording from one of the old groups from the late 70's- early eighties.Until this purchase, hadn't heard expect no mercy for many many years.First time I popped the cd in--- was like I had heard it last week. Love it