Long time rockers and an all-time personal favourite, Scorpions have undeniably had a see-saw time in recent history as far as creativity goes. 1999's Eye II Eye saw them try out lame euro electronic pop, then came the pretty good but still a cheesy idea for a hard rock meets orchestra album called Moment of glory. They continued to go this way with an acoustic album and a barrage of compilations to boot. Fans were worried, but their 2004 album Unbreakable saw them rocking out again. It was all back to form and as a big fan I was relieved. 2007 sees them releasing their next album, the 16th studio outing if I counted right.

First and foremost, it's a concept album. The Scorps have had the world-peace themed songs before but this time they do a full fucking concept album. Scorpions going all John Lennon on us doesn't sound all that delicious but that's not the worst bit about this album. Just look at the tracklist. These guys have hardly written anything. Rudolf has been the chief songwriter for over 37 years of the band's existence, but he's hardly got anything going on here. Jabs in fact has more co-credits than Rudy. Getting external songwriters and guest musicians are for washed up and desperate rockers and I'm afraid this band has reached this point on this album what with getting two hitmakers to handle the production duties. James Michael and Desmond Child who incidentally also contributes to some songwriting.

The music. Sure there are moments of catchiness, there are attempts by Jabs to play his signature sexed up pentatonic licks and during their metal moments they're heavier than ever before but the problem is, these are not Scorpions songs. No matter which line-up and which sound any given album throughout their 35 year-long discography has had, Scorpions have always sounded like no one else. But on Humanity: Hour 1, you can replace the vocals and these songs will invariably sound like any average bombastic clean produced hard rock band. And that's because these guys simply haven't written a large chunk of this themselves. What we have here is one of the most disappointing albums of 2007. Just lifeless boring plodding forced attempt at churning out another platinum. I'm not asking for another Sails of Charon, another Arizona and I'd really more than feel all right.



Year of Release: 2007
Label: BMG