February 5, 2022 by A.S. Van Dorston

Scorpions’ eighth album is arguably the band’s most consistently catchy and fun collection of hard rockers, and helped kick off the explosion of heavy metal and pop metal’s popularity along with Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest, Quiet Riot and Mötley Crüe.

This isn’t just a rollout of albums I’ve had listed for years. I’ve been listening and thinking, re-listening and shuffling. A fair amount of changes have been made just with these first five entries, giving some popular albums by Prince, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Madness, Simple Minds and Duran Duran a fresh listen. The latter is one of the albums I had since it first came out, and one that always left me unsatisfied, thinking, “is this the best they got?” They meaning the pop gods who reside in mythical lands like Birmingham. I didn’t have cable TV at home, but amazingly our 7th grade home room teacher put MTV on at a low volume during the seventh period study hour shortly after it started airing on August 1, 1981. We were transfixed, of course. By the next year, Duran Duran’s videos were inescapable, and Rio was one of my MTV related purchases. It was hard to admit when something I spent my very limited money on was a dud, but when “Hungry Like the Wolf” was the only song I really loved, that’s what Rio was for me. I’m thinking about it partly because they were just nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and feel that they can probably wait another ten years for their turn before more deserving artists get inducted. But as usual, they’ll probably butt in at the front of the line, while Scorpions are left out.

Hannover, Germany’s Scorpions, who’s eighth album, Blackout, not only had a megahit (“No One Like You”), but another half dozen tracks that were worthy of being hits (“Blackout,” “Can’t Live Without You,” “You Give Me All I Need,” “Dynamite,” “Arizona,” “When the Smoke is Going Down”). “Can’t Live Without You” did crack the top 100 in the UK. The album was catchier than Rio, but also more consistently satisfying over the following decades, and arguably better than, say, the megaselling behemoth that is AC/DC’s Back In Black (1980), and Judas Priest’s Screaming For Vengeance (1982). Can you believe Judas Priest, the first band that self-identified as heavy metal, still isn’t in the HOF? Scorpions always skirted the edges of metal, their third album In Trance (1975) for sure an early proto-metal influencer along with Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rainbow, UFO and Thin Lizzy. But overall, they’re just a really excellent hard rock band who, in 1982, were nearing the end of a near-perfect run of seven classic albums.

The band might be critically underrated, but they haven’t exactly suffered. Love at First Sting (1984) wasn’t as consistently great, but had bigger hits, and the band were headlining stadiums. They held their own commercially through the hair metal era, but the quality dipped like it did for so many. Their sole #1 hit ended up being the atrocious “Wind of Change” (1990). Song for song, Blackout may or may not be their best. “Blackout” is exhilarating as a driving album opener, way better than the following album’s “Bad Boys Running Wild,” but not as hooky as “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” “When the Smoke is Going Down” is a great, smoldering closing ballad, but a bit subdued compared to the epic “Still Loving You.” They had been honing their power ballad chops at least since “Holiday” from Lovedrive (1979) and “The Zoo” from Animal Magnetism (1980). “Arizona” was released as a video and features one of their stickiest riffs. Whatever the fan favorites are, Blackout is definitely one of the very best, fun, and catchiest hard rocking albums of 1982.