Having just praised the coming of Foo Fighters in my previous review (for Nirvana's In Utero) I now have to backtrack a little and try to understand how this album came together, and the purpose it serves.
OK, so we have a double disc release here, and the early reports did inform (warn) me that the first disc would be the 'rock' album, while the second disc would be a quieter reflection on things. No problem. It's the Foo Fighters, right? How bad could it really be?
Well, 'Album 1' has some reasonably worthwhile tunes on it. Not a solid album overall, but enough there to make you think there is something worth salvaging from the slight wreck.
...and then comes 'Album 2'. Why? What?! Really?!? Look, I'm sure this does cater to some people's tastes, and to those people go my sympathies. Perhaps a more important question is probably - did this band really have this inside them? Was it just a means to release this stuff from their systems? It's not as if they can't write decent ballad-type songs - "February Stars" is probably the finest example of this - but this is just boring, dreary and uninteresting.
Is this by the same man who came up with his concept for the Probot album? Did that album drain all sense of hard rock and metal from his veins? Seriously!!?! I cannot begin to conceive just what was going on here.
Unfortunately this was, and is, a huuuuuuge disappointment. Putting myself through the agony o listening to it all once again over the last couple of days should be penance enough for any wrongs I've done over the past 12 months.
Rating: Completely illogical. 1.5/5
Wow. All the pent up expectations and hopes for this album that were around when this was released in theory meant that it should have been less than the expectation and a disappointment overall. As it turned out, this wasn’t the case at all. It was edgy, it was unexpected. It was right for the time, and it satisfied the majority of the Nirvana fans who wanted something that wasn't a rehash of Nevermind but wasn't so far away from it that it alienated them (ie - the way many teenyboppa fans couldn't handle the brilliance of Faith No More's Angel Dust after the relatively radio-friendly The Real Thing.).
So this is a success, except for one thing that perhaps makes its presence felt more today than it did in 1994 - most of this is pretty boring. It's not a bad album, but in many aspects it is rather bland. Having listened to it for the past couple of days again I guess I was a little surprised, because my memories of the album in 1994-95 is of the great feel it had. Now, fifteen years later, my older and no doubt socially changed self finds that it isn't quite as good as I remember it to be.
Strangely enough, it is the commercially released songs that I found I enjoyed the most, while for the rest I was merely happy to enjoy in remembrance. It turns out that in listening to this album again, I am even more enamored by the fact that it was the Foo Fighters who rose from the ashes that fell following this album's release, and the excellent material that they have released since.
Rating: Perhaps an album that holds its own in its own time. 3.5/5
This is the album where Scorpions really begin to hit their straps, and find the sound and style that brought them fame and fortune.
Combining the wonderful vocals of Klaus Meine and the guitar work of Rudolph Schenker and Uli Jon Roth, this is a step up again from their previous release.
Having said that, it is the first half of the album that is the star attraction. Songs like “Dark Lady”, “In Trance” and “Top of the Bill” are top shelf tunes that still translate well today. They successfully move the album along at the right pace. While the second side of the album is good, I don’t think it holds up after the introductory five songs.
Uli Jon Roth on this album is fantastic. A lot of Scorpions successful build-u to the band they became can be attributed to his work during these albums in the mid-1970’s while he may not have been around for the mega-success later on, his influence was critical.
I don’t think this album ‘sounds’ as good now as it did 20-odd years ago, but the elements that made it great then are still apparent today.
Rating: Still a good listen today. 3/5
