A few years back I did a complete collection series on the Scorpions. I figured it was time to show all the vinyl off on The Collection. We will break it up in to two parts with the first being from the debut album, ‘Lonesome Crow’, all the up to ‘Blackout’ with every thing I have in between which we covered last week. For Part 2, this week we will cover ‘Love at First Sting’ up to their latest ‘Rock Believer’. This will cover from 1984 all the way up to their most recent released in 2022. This will have the classic line-up of Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker, Mathias Jabs, Francis Buchholz and Herman Rarebell. There will be new members on bass and drums down the road including Mikkey Dee from Motorhead on drums. We will talk covers, music and sound…all the good and bad an inbetween.
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It started back on August 1, 2022 and it ends today. The Scorpions Collection Series has been a run ride and after 40 posts, we come to the conclusion. And that conclusion will take the 19 Studio albums and 1 compilation and rank them from the best album to the worst. The 1 compilation is really a studio album. ‘Comeblack’ is 1/2 re-recorded hits and 1/2 covers so in my book, it is a studio album.
Scorpions started way back in 1965, but their first album after many ups and downs finally came out in 1972. It was ‘Lonesome Crow’. There are two classic line-ups of the band in my book. You have the 1st with Rudolf Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Klaus Meine, Francis Buchholz and Rudy Lennars. Then their heyday of the 80’s saw Rudolf Schenker, Klaus Meine, Francis Buchholz, Mathias Jabs and Herman Rarebell. Yes, Micheal Schenker was in the band and there have numerous drummers and the like, but I would say these two were my favorite line-ups. The final album came out in 2022 and it was called ‘Rock Believer’, so we have 50 years of albums and over 50 years of the band and it was a hell of a ride going through this series.
Now, let us get to the brass tacks here and start this ranking…and away we go….
THE WORST – ‘EYE II EYE’ (1999):
I think it is fair to say this might be the worst Scorpions album of them all. And since I’ve heard them all, I think I’m qualified to make that statement. I am all fine with experimenting, but with such a drastic change, it is a little too much all at once. The techno sound, the rapping, the almost full album of ballads was too shocking for most humans to handle. Now, there are a handful of great tracks on here, but not enough to save this pile of garbage (though good enough for a Scorps playlist). My Overall Score is a 1.0 out of 5.0 Stars as the Scorpions are not a boy band, they are not a pop band and they are definitely not a techno band. They are a hard rock, heavy metal giant that got lost in the 90’s like a lot of 70’s/80’s bands did.
We are not on to the twelfth studio album for the Scorpions and it is called ‘Face the Heat’. It sees the band bring on a new producer with the late, Bruce Fairbairn and it sees them go a little more political as well as change their sound a little to be heavier at times and yet more contemporary. Whether or not that is a good thing we will soon see. As with most Fairbairn produced albums, we see the band go to the famous Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver Canada to record this one as that was Bruce’s home base. And with them being in Canada, Bruce brought in Paul Laine to work on some backing vocals and as you know, Paul Laine was my first rock & roll star interview so anytime I can draw a connection to him, I point it out.
The band saw their first line-up change in a long time as Francis Buchholz left the band and new bass player, Ralph Rieckermann was now in. This would also end up being Herman Rarebell’s last album with the band but we will get to that on the next album. The rest of the gang was still in place with Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Mathias Jabs. The album was released on September 21, 1993 and saw the band’s popularity drop significantly. The album only went to #24 on the US Billboard 200 and only sold 450,000 copies, not even going Gold. Was it the change in sound or the fact the US was going in to a more grunge direction. I think it was a little of both.
Now my copy is a recent re-issue of the album with the first LP being the regular album and then a Bonus E.P. added holding 4 bonus tracks a couple of which were bonus tracks on the European and Japanese editions of the original album. The first LP is the standard 33 1/3 RPM while the Bonus E.P. was a 45 RPM and it is important to note that because when you throw on the second LP, if you don’t make the switch it sounds like a demon is singing as it is too slow. Now, if you play the 2nd first and then the first 2nd, you get Alvin & the Chipmunks, but I’m going off topic now. Back to the album.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 