Nazareth CD's are real hit & miss efforts, so a greatest hits with all of these tunes is a great deal. Sure a few gems are always missed in these packages, but it is a good place to start a collection or replace some of those well worn albums.

In the mid seventies it was interesting to watch Nazareth & Aerosmith battle it out for the bluesy hard rock crown. Both had early proto-metal ballads Naz "Love Hurts" and Aerosmith's "Dream On" boogie rockers Naz "This Flight Tonight" and Aerosmith's "Same Old Song & Dance" which evolved into rocking radio hits "Hair of the Dog" vs "Walk This Way" and ending with metal rockers "Expect No Mercy" vs "Back In The Saddle"

Both bands then put out a decade of ... and both resurfaced with comeback CD's. Nazareth's "No Jive" & "Move Me" (with new life injected by the return of the younger guitarist Billy Rankin) are great CD's but did not have the financial label backing that Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation" & "Pump" recieved. No half million dollar videos and professional song writers for Naz doomed them to a cult following, while Aerosmith is ruling the hard rock (or is it pop rock)airwaves.

In retrospective I would take this Nazareth collection to the desert island rather then Aerosmiths best of! Enjoy.

This GREATEST HITS album by Nazareth is excellent. Granted, there are a few tracks I wish had been replaced by others (and there are four from HAIR OF THE DOG which, if included, would have made this anthology even better), but overall, this is a terrific summation of an important 70s/early 80s hard rock band.

Nazareth is one of my favorites since 1975 when I heard "Hair of the Dog", their 5th album. But these "greatest hits" should've called "some greatest hits, some not at all" and I would slap the hands of people who composed this stuff... to not do that again. Only one third out of 18 songs deserves to be called "greatest", others are too far from that. It looks like the compilation was assembled from whatever songs were available for the producer. This is a crappy approach which allows "novices" of Nazareth's fans to get easily disappointed. I have composed 3 (!) my own "greatest hits" CDs from Nazareth tunes... It seems the producers were not familiar with Nazareth's 30-year efforts at all. Only tunes 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 15 and maybe 18 may present Nazareth as one of the best groups in 70's thru 90's. Sad experience...

Originally released in 1996 but remastered in 2010 with bonus tracks this set is basically the first CD off of the Nazareth anthology that came out a couple of years ago. Still if you like the band and just want a casual one CD collection this is truly it. I have it and love it this is all the Nazareth an person needs to buy unless your truly a diehard fan and then the Anthology or soon to be release Naz-Box set may be a better purchase for ya. Make sure you order the 2010 remastered verison of this set not the 1996 one however.

This import from Holland uses the same cover as the 12-track A&M release, distributed through Columbia House, and offers the same contents but with the addition of the last four tracks.

You would think that, for a hard-rock group from Scotland that had exactly two charted hit singles in North America, the original release and this import version would have included both. But no, for whatever reason they chose to leave out 1980s Holiday, which may have only reached # 87 Billboard Hot 100 but it WAS a charter - unlike most of their material over here - and its flipside Ship Of Dreams.

Their first NA hit, Love Hurts [# 8 in late 1975/early 1976] is here, and was a cover of an album cut by The Everly Brothers in 1960. Its B-side, Hair Of The Dog, is also here, as are some of their U.K. hits. These include Broken Down Angel [# 9 in early 1973], Bad Bad Boy [# 10 in summer 1973], This Flight Tonight [# 11 in late 1973], Shanghai'd In Shanghai [# 41 in spring 1974], My White Bicycle [# 14 in summer 1975], and Holy Roller [# 36 in late 1975].

They did do fairly well on this side of the Atlantic with album sales, seeing eight of their many LPs make those charts, with their best being Hair Of The Dog which made it to # 17 in early 1975.

This will appeal more to fans in or from the U.K.