Let me just say, for the record, Virgin Killer has the worst cover art in history. It’s offensive. Seriously. To the point where I feel bad enough to say how awful the cover is before I write a word about the music on the grooves of Scorpions fourth album.It’s so offensive that I want you to view it here, take a shower, and then you can resume reading the rest of this review.
Yes, it’s true: even with an album an offensive as Virgin Killer’s original cover, it was hideous enough to make me want to hear the album. I mean, I’m a fan of Love At First Sting, Blackout, Animal Magnetism and a bit of Lovedrive, so it’s not a stretch for me to at least ponder why a band like Scorpions would allow a cover like this to happen and potentially ruin their careers.
Because, and this is important, the band had yet to find an audience in the U.S. and they were poised to make an entrance here. So when they did, they were doing so on perhaps the worst way to introduce themselves.
“Hello America! We’re Scorpions! Just a band of longhaired child rapists from Germany! Who wants to rock with us?!”
When the band and/or record company (RCA, in case you want you add them to your state’s sexual offender lists) decided to change the cover, they replaced it with one of the shittiest photographs of Scorpions they could ever find and they simply had individual head shots with a caption of the band member’s names for the follow-up release Taken By Force.
So now that the cover art drama has been explained and is out of the way, it’s time to explore the grooves of this, the band’s fourth album released in early 1977.
Growing up on classic era-Scorps (’79-’89) it’s weird to hear the band in some very 70’s classic rock production as well as hearing them with a guitarist who also shares vocal duties with Klaus Fucking Meine.
Ulrich Jon Roth (who I always thought was Uncle Jon Roth until I finally noticed the spelling) provides some of the strangest vocals ever to his self-penned “Hell Cat,” which sounds more like a lost track from the Crazy World of Arthur Brown than Scorpions.
Roth’s guitar work is impressive, while admittedly strange to anyone who’s more familiar with Mathias Jabbs’ work in the band; he’s bluesier, more fluid, and there are more than a few psychedelic overtones in his solos.
The lyrics are just as hilariously innocent as the band’s later attempts, and perhaps a bit more obvious on the whole “second language” limitations.
Instead of hinting at living in an alcohol haze, they go with “A different life/Than whiskey cola.”
Rather than simply state how the job at the factory sucks, they curious match “Don’t be lazy, man and work off your ass/He’s the boss you gotta do what he says” (pronounced “sass”) together, providing people with a bunch of unnecessary information while still managing to get the idea across.
How they were even able to make all of this sounded phonetically similar is disclosed when Klaus admits the secret on the track “Crying Days:” “Force yourself to use you brain.”
And in true Scorpions fashion, it takes over a minute of hard-rocking and guitar soloing before those words of wisdom are even uttered.
Hell, even the song “Catch Your Train” is essentially back by a never ending solo by Roth, like he’s too much of a ball hog to let Klaus get any lead singer attention.
Aside from the enormously shitty Roth track “Polar Nights” (it’s almost shittily unlistenable), Virgin Killer is a surprisingly good album which managed to give me some newfound appreciation for their career.
And to think that a picture of a naked pre-pubescent girl prevented me from discovering this fact in the past.
