Monday 12 December 2011

Dave's 500 Bus Albums No 17 - Scorpions "In Trance" (1976)

Ok so Pete Malcolm may have introduced me to the concept of Heavy Metal, but I was already listening to it. I just hadn't realised yet.

This was the first Scorpions album I ever heard. I first saw it in Grays Record Library and was attracted by the futuristic "Scorpions" font on the cover. And of course the attractive blonde squatting over the white Stratocaster guitar, with one breast hanging out. I was 14. What do you expect?

When I got it home it was quite unlike anything I'd heard before. I'd been listening to Queen since about 1973, so I was familiar with guitar solos (this was round about the time of "Bohemian Rhapsody", when Queen still played Rock Music), but this was louder and faster than what I was used to. It was also sung by a man with a strong German accent.

I did like it, although it wasn't as Science-Fictiony as I'd thought it would be (from the font). It did have a track on it called "Robot Man" though, so that was OK.

I suspect I recorded it on cassette and kept it for a few years until I eventually bought the LP.

It's a very different album from "Lonesome Crow", primarily because there's only two members of the band who made that album left. This is very definitely proto-Metal, although at the time I had never heard of the term. In hindsight it's very much an album of two halves - a heavier, more Teutonic style of song, and a more melodic, slightly "poppier" style. The production is excellent, and it's very loud. Roth's guitar work screeches and wails a good 4 years ahead of it's time (although I find his vocals a bit tiresome), and Schenker's underrated guitar keeps the rhythm nice and tight.

There are actually two songwriting teams at work here as well. Klaus Meine/Rudolf Schenker, and Ulrich (aka Uli Jon) Roth. Roth has been the lead guitarist for this and the previous LP "Fly to the Rainbow", and a very Hendrix-influenced one he is too. At this stage in the Scorpions game, Roth was the main songwriter, while Klaus Meine and rhythm guitarist Rudolf Schenker contributed fewer songs to each album.

Both Meine and Roth sung their own compositions but at the time I first heard this LP I probably didn't notice that there were two different vocalists here. But I did notice that I liked some songs better than others.

Is the album any good? Yes it still is. Although it's not quite the definitive lineup, that's only a couple of years away. Two LPs later Ulrich Roth would leave, Mathias Jabs would join and Meine/Schenker would become the sole Scorpions songwriters, forging the unique "Scorpions" sound that would see them through the next three decades.

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