You need me right now. You might not know it, but I’m going to do you a service that you might be extremely thankful for. I’m just going to do my thing and write from the heart. But what I spill out here will uncover a gem that you didn’t know about. And this ain’t no ordinary stone, we’re talking about. This is a breathtaking diamond. This is an album that might just still be on your playlist five years from now — and that’s a big deal.
First off, I need to build some credibility. I need you to know that I realize something very important. What is that very important thing? It’s my taste in music. You need to know that I think this band put out some really SUCKY albums – and for a long time. They were kind of worth forgetting about. And then two albums came out back-to-back (over the course of three years — between 2004 and 2007). And I need to warn you: don’t jump ahead and think, “Oh, look! They’ve even released a new studio album since Humanity: Hour 1. I’ll just get that.” I’m sorry to report that Sting in the Tail sucks – or it’s a least forgettable and ignore-able for the non-Scorps fan. Don’t waste your time.
Now that I’ve surely at least given myself a tiny bit of credibility, let me give you some background on my love for this band. This band discovered itself with its second album, Fly to the Rainbow (1974), after they hired this guitar phenom named Ulrich Roth. Fly to the Rainbow kind of sucks, but the title track is one barn-burner live. This Ulrich Roth (aka Uli Jon Roth) is an amazing virtuoso that knows that controlled feedback tone that masters like Hendrix and Vaughan were able to coax out of their guitars. This guy’s guitar work is amazing. The band found its identity with In Trance (1975), but really hit its stride with their first live album — Tokyo Tapes (1978). Uli left the band and even left a parting shot on their last studio album, Taken By Force. The song was “I’ve Got To Be Free,” which declared, “Hey, hey, hey, I’ve got to be free/ I’m not your stepping stone … so leave my life alone.” Whether it was intended as a parting shot is unclear, but it’s pretty ironic. The band hired Matthias Jabs, got Rudolph Schenker’s brother Michael in for one album — Lovedrive — and they hit the States and finally broke worldwide. My personal spiritual journey (coming back to God as a prodigal son in the summer of ’83) kind of put a bookend for awhile to new Scorpions output from that point on. Perhaps, like Uli Jon Roth, I tired of filling my mind with inane lyrics about sexuality (like “…the bitch is hungry, give her inches and feed her well…” from the mega-hit, “Rock You Like A Hurricane”). I never really got into Love at First Sting, Savage Amusement, Crazy World, Face the Heat, Pure Instinct or Eye II Eye (the last three of which kind of stunk).
Now, when I criticize the Scorpions and say a certain album stinks, I should probably clarify. This German metal band is one of the best the world has ever heard. They have a unique guitar sound, unique vocalist and they’ve written some exceptional songs over the years. They never cease to put on a killer live show. I’d hate to be a headliner that followed this band. They have the ability to just kill it on stage — night after night. My criticism is based partly on the fact that they’ve been able to create some really great tunes over the years (like “The Zoo” and, even though I don’t appreciate all the lyrics, “Rock You Like A Hurricane” is pretty catchy). The problem I have as a so-called critic is when the band relies on its own formula, or so it seems, and doesn’t do anything new, different or very creative. It’s one thing to have a classic sound, but it’s another to keep building and delivering greatness again and again. It’s not easy feat.
The band’s latter career has not been great. One side note, though, while they were still in their heyday and riding on the momentum of their exceptional live show and the huge popularity of Love At First Sting, they actually had a hand in changing the world. Their song, “Winds of Change,” actually played a cultural role in the tide shifting, the Berlin Wall coming down and the fall of Communism. No, it didn’t cause any of that, but that tune, with its whistling refrain, was certainly a soundtrack to those events shortly afterward.
I haven’t even told you about this amazing album that I started to write this blog about. Thanks for reading this far. But I can’t go into it just yet. Now that I have laid the groundwork on why I neglected this band over the years, you can understand why I was so surprised to hear them release something relevant and worth getting excited over. An entire decade came and went between 1993 and 2003 where this band’s recorded output didn’t deserve accolades. They might not have truly sucked, but they weren’t delivering anything much more than a traveling nostalgia act for headbangers. They could deliver like nobody’s business live, but crafting new music that was as good as their past hits? Fail.
So when I received a package in the mail with this album called Unbreakable back in 2004, I wasn’t expecting much. My respect for the band forced me to play it, but I was expecting not much benefit from the investment of my time and attention. The first track, “New Generation,” did not alleviate my fears, though the big, slow groove did have a sexiness to it that hearkened back to the title track to Animal Magnetism. But track two (“Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em”) reinforced the notion that this CD would soon go into my archives and probably never be pulled out again., but then “Deep and Dark” came on and I had to stop the work I was doing. Unbreakable suddenly changed from being background music to being in the forefront. What a great song! It was as if the band reached back into its peak years and came out fighting as if they had something to prove again. Track four takes another step back (“Borderline” needs to be deleted from all of recorded history. At least take it off this album. When you check out this album to see if I’m crazy, please skip “Love ‘Em… and “Borderline.” Please. I’m serious.)
“Blood Too Hot” takes off again and finds this band jamming with intensity, speed, grit and soul. Even the fist-pumping anthemic chants of “Rock! Rock! Rock!” are too powerful to be mocked. When this song ends (if it’s played at max volume), it begs for a timeout to catch your breath. You really feel like you’ve experienced something intense by the time its over. And the tunes “Someday is Now” and “This Time” all have that full-tilt energy, too. There’s a couple of Scorpions power ballads on here, “Maybe I, Maybe You” (which hearkens back to the spine-tingling vocal prowess of Klaus Meine on “Still Loving You”) and “She Said.” Gentle, melodic, moving.
“Can You Feel It” sounds like Stryper. It starts off with a big, layered BGV chorus that would fit right in on To Hell With The Devil, right after “Calling On You” (instead of “Free,” which is big compliment, as well as almost blasphemous to the Stryper fan). The freaky thing about this song is that it would not only fit quite nicely inside the Stryper catalog for the way it sounds, but also for the lyrics. This could be a song written by a newly converted Christian that wants anyone he knows to experience the same thing:
“Can you feel it / love is waiting there / when you feel it/I’ll be waiting there / something has come over me / I can’t explain how full and free/ I want you to feel it/ suddenly deep inside I had peace in my mind / on the last day I walk the earth / I found the answer to the question that we all search: where do we go from here?
Anyway, you know how it goes when a song’s lyrics freak you out on a spiritual level? Sometimes we perceive things that aren’t there, but sometimes the similarities to our worldview are too close to ignore. Anyway, another great song.
“Through My Eyes” is another epic song. It ends with a crescendo of desperation, chronicling a breakup:
“What was meant to be forever / is breaking all apart / what was meant to be forever / leaves a hole inside my heart / what was meant to be forever / we throw it all away…”
The album ends with a bonus track that shows the age of these amazing rockers. It’s called “Remember the Good Times” (Retro Garage Mix). It’s kind of goofy, but it highlights things that these aging musicians grew up with (Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe episode, Jimi Hendrix, the Summer of Love in ’67).
This Unbreakable album found a band that could have very easily been washed up (and were in the minds of many — especially young 20/30-somethings that had moved on to other genres of music, but here they were screaming out of the studio with an album full of tunes that could easily rank up there with the best in the catalog. I say it’s better than the Blackout album. It sounds like it could have come out in 1982, but without sounding dated. It had the personality of that era, but none of the sonic audio stamps that can date music.
I said to anyone who would listen back when Unbreakable came out (2004) that it “is the best metal album to come out since Metallica’s black album or Images and Words by Dream Theater.” I still believe that. Name a great, monumental metal album that has been released between 1991 and 2004. Is it better than this? There’s been some good ones. There’s been a handful of great ones (I really like The Hammering Process by Living Sacrifice and P.O.D.’s Satellite, though the latter isn’t really full-on metal, though it has heavy elements to it), but I claim Unbreakable as being it.
And it’s a crying shame that the music-listening world does not agree with me — but I think that’s mostly due to the fact that they never had a chance to hear it. Rock radio stations will have classic metal bands in their studio on a concert stop, but they won’t have any interest in playing said band’s new songs. They wanna hear the hits (the old hits).
This album is remarkable. If you play it loud, I’m pretty confident it’ll win you over. That’s not an easy task. Not everyone likes the Scorpions. Millions did. Millions still do, but not everyone. If you ever did love this band, this album will do something to you.
And we haven’t even talked about the follow-up yet, Humanity: Hour 1.
Comments