Its been a little under five years since the Scorpions released Sting In The Tail, the album that they decided halfway through its production would be their last. And in some respects it was, as far as being a truly fresh, organic batch of songs purposefully written for its release. It was a fine album as well, perhaps their strongest overall in twenty years, featuring a handful of gems that for me at least were comparable to their 80s/early 90s classics (check this retrospective for details). The last song on that album’s tracklisting was the rather excellent, wistful power ballad titled “The Best Is Yet To Come”; a title that could either be taken metaphorically as the band’s hopeful affirmation of their post-rock n’ roll lives, or literally as in this probably isn’t our last studio album. It certainly wasn’t going to be their last release, as the 2013 MTV Unplugged set proved, but in interviews the band seemed adamant that they had recorded their last studio album. It was around the promo tour for those unplugged shows that Klaus Meine let slip that the band was considering digging in the vaults for some unfinished material, stuff from the 80s, 90s, and even 00’s that they had been unable to utilize on the albums they were supposed to have been on. It was the kind of thing that sounded like it was meant for a boxed set, or perhaps as bonus tracks on yet another best of compilation —- it usually is for most bands.
So you’ve got to give credit to the Scorpions for firstly having the hutzpah for pulling a KISS and risking flack or scorn; and secondly for taking those unfinished riffs and song fragments and deciding to write a brand new studio album around them. If you’re prone to taking wide angle lenses to things like I am, you might consider this attempt a brave move at marrying the past and present, an actual merging of old and new. And they must’ve had a lot of old riffs clanking around, because with all the bonus tracks from the various editions of Return to Forever tallied up with the original twelve song track listing, the Scorpions are releasing nineteen new songs. Nineteen! That’s a double album by prog band standards, and by leaps and bounds the longest Scorpions studio album to date, clocking in at just over an hour. By anyone’s reasonable standards its close to impossible for an album that long to be filler free, and unfortunately, the Scorpions haven’t had the best track record of making wall to wall classic albums. Here I rate it about a sixty-forty ratio in favor of above average to good songs, and a couple potentially great ones amidst set against a set of almosts and not quites.
The good stuff first then, which is found as early as the album’s lead off single “We Built This House”, which is not a PBS program but instead a paean to the durability of the band’s fifty year career. I say this based on my viewing of the promotional EPK the band made where they spoke a little about each song on the album —- despite the lyrics clearly referring to a significant other known as “baby”. How they reconcile both perspectives is beyond me… maybe the verses are meant for the ladies (or the lads, whatever) and the chorus is just about the Scorpions themselves? I’m being pedantic, the Scorpions have earned the right to bend metaphors however they’d like, and the most important things here are the melody and the hooks. Its built on the classic Scorpions pattern of quiet/loud dynamics, a hushed verse that explodes into an arena ready chorus, but it does seem to be one of the few entirely new songs, its music penned by the band’s longtime Swedish producers (and MTV Unplugged musicians) Mikael Andersson and Martin Hansen. The other haus-titled song, “House of Cards”, is actually built on the back of a resurrected melody, its acoustic balladry reminiscent of the band’s early 90s Crazy World / Face the Heat era.
A personal favorite that might not be for everybody is the playful, sing-songy “Catch Your Luck and Play”, where a riff that reminds me of the “Rhythm of Love” swings back and forth and opens up in a chorus replete with “heys!” and “oohs!”. Its a glam rock styled approach that’s unusual for the Scorpions, but I like its sheer cheekiness —- there are moments in there when I’m reminded of The Darkness. Its chorus is new, but the skeleton of the song dates back to 1986-1988’s Savage Amusement era. Its paired alongside another oldie turned new, the very Blackout-ish “Rock n’ Roll Band”, an uptempo, adrenaline fueled rocker that is built on a classic, lean and muscled Rudolf Schenker riff. I was a bit put off by the clunky lyrics, but the guitars won me over here, its just a highly infectious riff and its kind of a shame that it didn’t make it onto one of their eighties records. Speaking of the lyrics, do yourself a favor and checkout the band member’s commentary on the EPK video, Klaus’ meandering description of this song’s origins are typical Scorpions —- something about riding around on the sunset strip, offloading into some gentleman’s club somewhere and when questioned as to their identity, loudly proclaiming “we’re in a rock n’ roll band!”. Modern rock bands would make this come off as sad, lazy, and appallingly pathetic. Klaus and company make it charming, affable even, a band of crazy Germans with Euro-tight shirts and thinning hairlines strutting around like cocksure roosters. This is the residue of an increasingly lost art form.
There’s a handful of other good songs; “Rollin’ Home, a laid back rocker with a Def Leppard-ish stomp; the ridiculously titled “Hard Rockin’ the Place”, built on a riff from the Blackout era; a handful of decent ballads in “Gypsy Life”, “Eye of the Storm” (being the newest of the ressurected song ideas, from the Humanity Hour 1 era in 2007); a Meine solo-penned lonely sounding number in “Who We Are”; and the panoramic “When the Truth is a Lie” —- again, all above average in quality, but nothing you’d hate yourself for missing. Where things get murky is with the vanilla alternative rock styled guitar rock of “The World We Used to Know”, a song that sounds like it came from the Eye II Eye sessions; as well as the blandness of the album opener “Going Out With a Bang” where chest thumping bravado fails to move me like the more emotional reflections on calling it quits found on Sting In the Tail. Its also unfortunate that “Dancing With the Moonlight” doesn’t seem to live up to its title, especially when you consider songs by the same title by other artists (Thin Lizzy comes to mind immediately). It has a cool backstory about the turbulence laden flight endured by the Scorpions, Alice Cooper and others that happened to also double as Meine’s birthday celebration. The song is somewhat paint by numbers however, with boring verses and a chorus that never seems to take off (heyo!).
So yeah, a lot of music to sift through, I don’t even think I covered all the songs but you get the point. Its a mixed bag, and with nineteen songs potentially on offer that’s about as good as it was going to get. I’m not sure why there was such an emphasis within the band to usher these out all at once. Surely a narrower focus on a smaller pool of candidates would’ve made more sense, such as sticking to the regular edition’s twelve song tracklisting. Maybe the Scorpions are just kinda over the whole studio process by now and wanted this to be a grand finale of everything they could’ve potentially delivered. In that case, its a successful project, just not their most listenable one. If you’re looking to celebrate the Scorpions 50th anniversary, get Sting in the Tail and just check this one out on Spotify. The band was writing great, fresh songs for most of the last decade… so much so that they really didn’t need to dig around in the past.