Guitar star with a vengeance

Press, 30 December 1976, Page 9

Guitar star with a vengeance

Entertainment scene

By Jude Fahey led Nugent ‘•Free-for-all’' I Epic ELPS 3786): In heavy metal days we would hate aiiowed ours<= ves to he battered by this onslaught al! right long Now one or two songs would lay us flat — were not as young as we weie and our ears have been conditioned to a good deai more sophistication. Nugent is the savage, the Wild Man of Borneo, the lurker in dark allevs. An oddity in 1976. For those who can still stand it though its dynamic, bat-tering-ram stuff, harking hack to Steppenwolf, Sabbath and the early Slade, w hen sheer raw power was the thing. Nugent and his Amboy Dukes in Chicago could match any of them for violence and flash guitar vet went almost unnoticed for years. Finally Nugent won a singing- with Epic

this year and suddenly he was a star. The years of practice then have produced a guitarist who is startingly fast, and angry, His songs here don’t

count for much but the succession of deadly riffs and runs is nearly overpowering. Meatloaf (remember Meatloaf. “Eddy” in “Rocky Horror''?) provides a strong high-shriek-

ing voice over it on several tracks. The outstanding songs are “Hammerdown" and “Writing on the Wall,” both simply electrifying and not for softies.