Scorpions - Unbreakable

*=Staff's pick	New Generation* Love 'Em Or Leave 'Em Deep And Dark* Borderline Blood Too Hot Maybe I Maybe You Someday Is Now My City My Town Through My Eyes* Can You Feel It This Time She Said Remember The Good Times

Genre	Hard Rock/AOR	Klaus Meine	Vocals
Tracks	13	Rudolf Schenker	Guitar
Runningtime	57 Min.	Matthias Jabs	Guitar
Label	BMG	Pawel Maciwoda	Bass
Release	05 May 2004	James Kottak	Drums
Country	Germany	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

If you listened to the pre-talk, this record was supposed to be almost incredibly hard, Scorpions goes thrash… But that is not the truth when you finally play it in your stereo. I would say it's a rather typical Scorpions-album. Some moments rock quite okay - others are hopelessly boring. Well played and well produced… Anyway, Klaus Meine still got his characteristic voice. James Kottak is a fresh influence behind the drums. Scorpions' latest album Eye II Eye (1999) got a lot of bad criticism, and the band promised that this time it would rock like in the good old days. Sure they tried, but I will not say that they succeeded. An album like Face The Heat (1993) is far more vital than Unbreakable.

First out is New Generation, and it sounds promising! It is the heaviest track - that unfortunately the rest of the record can't match. But what's up with the children's choir? I have never really liked such ingredients in my hard rock - I probably never will either! On the following Love 'Em Or Leave 'Em, Scorpions is already back in their usual soft sound. Although it starts with a quite heavy riff, the dull chorus fucks it up. Deep And Dark is actually not so deep and dark, musically. But it's a god song, and one of the first to stick in your head for more than two minutes. It has a kind of heavy riff to.

The highlight on the album is Through My Eyes, a track that starts as a ballad but explodes in a heavy rock chorus. It also proved to be a great live act, at the gig at Sweden Rock Festival this summer. Otherwise there are too many songs that are quite anonymous. For example Borderline, Blood To Hot and Can You Feel It are songs that you can listen to many times - without really noticing that they exist… What I miss the most is actually the obligatory, classical power ballad, á la Scorpions. Maybe I Maybe You have some potential, but never really hits me, in spite of the groovy end. She Said is a boring thing, far away from Scorpions golden lighter-waving moments.

The last track is one of those (nowadays obligatory) bonus-tracks that makes you wonder if it's possible to burn a scratch in the disc that makes it stop earlier. A terrible thing it is anyway, wherein Meine namedrops persons, from Jimi Hendrix to J.F.K. - whom lived in "the good times".

To sum up, it's an ok album, to leave on in the background when you do the dishes. But it is not the revolutionary comeback of the "good old" Scorpions that the promotion promised. Personally I think I prefer the more experimental Eye II Eye (although everyone else seems to hate it), before this predictable, sometimes even lame, thing. Some extra credit for an elegant cover though!