★ ★ ★ ★ ★
This is almost a Retrospective Review, but I have never heard this album in its entirely. And what an album, just a solid rocker from start to finish! Zevon's third album has nine tracks (in its original form) and of those nine, four are absolute, five-star classics of black humor. With "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," "Werewolves of London," the macabre title track, and "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" on here, the rest of the album could be recordings of Zevon belching and it still would rank as an all-time classic. I don't know if Zevon intended these songs to amplify and lampoon typical masculine tropes, but that's how I read them, and either way, they rock. Favorite tracks that were new to me until now: "Accidentally Like a Martyr," "Johnny Strikes Up the Band."
