Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When a band reaches fifty years in one form or another, the listener could quite rightly expect for Time to get the better of them. Time though can be fickle, it can easily be as nice to the passing of the seconds and hours as it can be cruel and waywardly malicious to the minutes and days that fall in between. As the time fritters past, it could easily subject you to ridicule and the rigours of slowing down, the steam not just running low, but barely existent, in your 20s and 30s and yet elevate you to a position of power and full of intrigue, deep fascination and adoration in your 40s and 50s. Such is the arrangement and accord time seems to have struck with the Scorpions and their new album, Return To Forever.

Away from Time and in keeping with the overall power that continental Europe seems to have sway over the world of Rock and Metal in recent years, perhaps it is only right and proper that Rudolph Schenker and the current incarnation of the group once more put their stamp down on the world but instead of some dystopian figure from 1984 peering down at the listener, there is a moment of clarity which allows the boot to kick away the stones, rubble and fallen artifice and hold firm, braced against the ruins and offer a gentle helping hand to those willing to listen to the years of talent that resound in the band.

Forever is a big word, it implies length, unchecked, eternal unbalance and a world in which without end can fall into the wrong hands, can blister and burn as dystopia runs rampage and the thought of any type of revolution never materialises, change doesn’t happen. However, when forever is applied to something that you thought had long since had its day; that the tears of grief that you may have allowed to fall in readiness of feeling bereft without hope of seeing a resurrection, then it can be a good restorative emotion. Like fashion, music will eventually come round full circle and Return To Forever is arguably as good as anything that the band did in the emerging formative years and in their absolute heyday.

Songs such as the opener Going Out With A Bang, House of Cards, the seemingly deeply personal Eye of the Storm, Catch Your Luck and Play and All For One all catch the breath of the listener as they scramble safely up the safety net provided by the Scorpions, Time deciding, insisting, that at least one more round be gone through and that the world would be less colourful without both Schenker brothers helping the world of Rock ease its way past historical minefields.

For the Scorpions, no matter what the line-up, Time has other designs on their legacy, and Return To Forever is a great place to start falling in love once more.

Ian D. Hall