A Tribute to The Scorpions

by

Various Artists

Edit

I'll start saying that this tribute is highly recommandable to any power metaller who knows at least a few bands on the album.

As the track list is not displayed, here it is :

1. He s A Woman, She s A Man (Helloween)

2. Rock You Like A Hurricane (Sinergy)

3. Dynamite (Paradox)

4. Still Loving You (Sonata Artica)

5. Blackout (Stratovarius)

6. Don t Stop At The Top (Children of Bodom)

7. Dark Lady (Agent Steel)

8. Top Of The Bill (Steel Prophet)

9. Dampflockfuhrer (Prolopower)

10. Coming Home (Tankard)

11. Coast To Coast (Disbelief)

12. Passion Rules The Game(To/Die/For)

13. Pictured Life (Breaker)

14. Polar Nights (Therion)

15. Is There Anybody There (Rough Silk)

16. Another Peace Of Meat (Metalium)

17. Alien Nation (Seven Witches)

18. Send Me An Angel (Custard)

19. Rock You Like A Hurricane (S.O.D)

Beware : If you've never heard of Nuclear Blast, or if you're a stranger to the names 'Stratovarius', 'Sonata Arctica', 'Children of Bodom', I wouldn't recommend it ... unless you like taking risks. But I think this is still great even for those who don't know bands from Nuclear Blast.

If you know some of the bands, you may be surprised by their different sound. At first, I didn't recognize 'Children of Bodom' and 'Sonata Arctica', but the covers are damn great !

However, I found something quite insulting in this album : S.O.D's cover of 'Rock you like a hurricane'. It doesn't last one minute, you just have time to hear a stupid scream and it's over. And the photo of the band inside the booklet confirmed my idea these guys are horrible.

As a Scorps fan for 25 years, I thought it would be at least interesting to hear different versions of the classics, and was intrigued that some of the less common songs had been covered here.

However, if you appreciate the originals for the sound, arrangement and composition, steer well clear of this. Most of these bands think "tribute" means "speed it up and holler at the top of your voice". Most of the guitar sounds are good enough, but too many of these bands rely on the scooped mid-range chug sound which gets a bit dull after four or five tracks.

The version of "Still Loving You" manages to combine the most terrible interpretation with some rather nice touches towards the end, whilst "Don't Stop At The Top" is utterly mangled. The version of "Coast To Coast" is an exercise in too much distortion, whilst APoM and PRtG are mauled and destroyed.

Mind you, there's a couple of good efforts which are actually worth listening to - "Dark Lady"'s pretty good, and "Pictured Life" is impressive. "Top Of The Bill"'s OK too.

Overall, though, this has to be a complete waste of cash simply because the original spirit of 90% of these songs has been disregarded in favour of a "who's got the chunkiest guitar sound and fastest drummer" competition.

Honestly, if you've been a fan of the Scorpions since before Wind Of Change, leave this one alone. A far better idea would be if the band re-recorded these classic moments themselves with today's sound and technology - the oldies on "Live Bites" came out pretty good ... how about it?