SCORPIONS — Fly To The Rainbow (review)

SCORPIONS — Fly To The Rainbow album cover Album · 1974 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
bonnek
One of the great things about Metal is the shocked faces you get from people when you mention you're a fan of the genre. It gets even better when you add "and oh yes I even like the Scorpions", guaranteed to be met with nothing short of horror and reactions like "foul taste in music man". Actually, I don't hold these German metallers in that high regards, but they have their qualities and on their second album they amply show them.

In short, "Fly To The Rainbow" is a fun and feel-good early metal album with slight prog rock leanings, a bit indebted to Uriah Heep and Budgie sometimes but with a quite original metallic sound (often with twin rhythm and lead guitars) that Judas Priest would take a lot of inspiration from on "Sad Wings of Destiny". Fans of that JP album are sure recommended to check this one out if they haven't already.

The best sits at the front and the album could be called a masterpiece judging by the first half of the original LP. But ater the happily rocking "Speedy's Coming" and the 2 epics "They Need a Million" and "Drifting Sun", the pace slows down to more ballad-based songwriting. "Fly People Fly" is a deserving one, nicely smooth and mellow, but not their best, "Far away" gets a bit heavier but is hardly memorable, "Fly to the Rainbow" is fairly ambitious, with faster sections breaking up the slow pace, but it is too long, ending with a drawn out spacey guitar soloing and spoken word vocals that might gets you fooled into thinking this is an Eloy album. Lost inbetween the ballads sits an awkward hippie-rock song "This is My Song".

An album split between a 4.5 star first half and a more pedestrian 3 star second half. That's like 4 flower-metal daisies.
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bonnek wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Hard to chose which Scorpions cover is the worst actually :)
Pekka wrote:
more than 2 years ago
The music might be good, but this album must have one of the worst covers ever. Or at least weirdest. I'm not sure if I'd wear that combination of a mailbox and a mirror on my head. But I must admit that the propeller shoes are cool.

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