Title: Virgin Killer Artist: The Scorpions Label: RCA Records Release Date: 1976 Rating: 5 Skulls
Read the Review of Taken by Force Official Web Site for this Artist Discuss on the Metal Judgment Web Board Submit/Read Reader Reviews of this Album

---

Death's Review:
To a lot of folks in today's metal scene, the Scorpions are just a bunch of middle-aged German pop balladeers. But the "Winds of Change"-era of bland radio numbers and substantial mainstream success is not all that this band is about and - if you are a true metalhead - certainly not what you should remember the Scorpions for. No, the Scorpions have gone through many incarnations throughout their thirty-plus-year recording history, and believe me, the Scorpions used to be cool.

In many ways, the early Scorpions may indeed have been the inspiration for the heavy metal parody Spinal Tap. Like a lot of their peers in the early to-mid 70's. such as Judas Priest (Rocka Rolla), Rush (2112), Deep Purple (Machine Head) and Black Sabbath (Sabbotage), the Scorpions started out as mildly-psychedelic "acid" hard rock, a strychnine-laced blend of flower child elements and powerful early metal music. Albums like 1974's Fly to the Rainbow are an excellent place to start if you want to dive into that dramatic, dynamic, epic and trippy early material. But eventually, a few albums later, the Scorpions became more focused on what we now call "classic" or "traditional" heavy metal, power chords and guitar solos and hard rocking drum beats. By the time the Scorpions got around to stuff like "No One Like You" and "Rock You Like a Hurricane" in the early-to-mid 80's, they had definitely come a long way.

Virgin Killer is a great example of this transition period, although there are a steady string of cool albums out there that are worth checking out, like In Trance, Lovedrive, and Animal Magnetism. Like Spinal Tap, the original Virgin Killer album cover caused enough of a stir that it was changed to just a shot of the band members. But there are lots of hard rocking, straightforward numbers here on this album that really emphasize the transition toward more of crunch and a bite to the sound. Virgin Killer is also notable for the fact that it featured the temporary return of guitarist Michael Schenker to the Scorpions' fold, who teamed with Uli Jon Roth to provide an album full of filler guitar playing.

All in all, I chose to do the Scorpions as a classic this week because I truly believe that there are many of you out there that do not realize how much killer music the band made earlier in their career. For those who hae not yet explored this material - you're in for a treat, and if you decide to dig deep into the vault, several hours of killer hard rock.

 

---

---

[- Metal Judgment Home -]    [- Email Metal Judgment -]
©1999 Metal Judgment. All rights reserved.