Is There Any Sting Left in the Tail?

The Scorpions' 17th and potentially last album should please core fans.

After almost 40 years in the business and 17 studio albums, longtime German rock band The Scorpions recently announced that their latest album, Sting in the Tail, would be their last and they would be retiring. But the band wanted to give fans one last album that should show fans if there is any  ’sting in the tail’ left (yeah, I know – that was really bad).

With the new album, the Scorpions don’t try to go off in bizarre directions or try to pump out their greatest hits to a symphony (they already did that back in 2000), but go for a group of songs that will satisfy fans of any era of the band’s music.

The album starts with the only track that may seem a little off to Scorpion fans of yore, the boogie based “Raised to Rock,” in which the track comes off like something more out of Aerosmith’s back catalog than the Scorpions. But they make up for the opening song sputter with some songs that are sure to rekindle the 80s hard rock glory days. Tracks like the title track and “Slave Me” come off as polished and sound fresh, in which the guitar duo of Matthais Jabs and Rudolf Schenker show they haven’t lost it after all these years. Check out the track “No Limit” and tell me you don’t hear echoes of one of their 80s hits, “Big City Nights.”

Even though this reviewer isn’t a fan of power ballads, fans of the “Winds of Change” early 90s Scorpions will want to check out songs like “The Good Die Young” and “Lorelei.” The band bids adieu to its fans on the final track, aptly titled “The Best Is Yet to Come” that comes out as a fitting end for the band (if they don’t decide to come back in a couple of years).

Sting In The Tail is the  musical equivalent to a TV show that might have jumped the shark during their run but you still want to come back for the final episode to see how it ends.  Even people that lost track of the Scorpions after their heyday will be pleasantly satisfied, unlike many bands of that era, to see that the band will most likely end on a positive note.