Review by Shezma for Scorpions - Taken by Force (1977)

It's sacrilege I know, but I have never enjoyed the scorpions and I have given them a chance on multiple occasions. Full disclosure, I listened to this on Spotify with their 2015 remaster version and it just sounds way too clean. Not sure if the original version had more personality but the version I listened to was too "perfect" like they went in and took out any of the tiny extra vibrations from the strings or that the drums never rang out more than absolutely necessary. It feels like they went back in and made sure any imperfections weren't there so much so that it kept it from having substance. Also, this does not feel like a metal record to me at all. Glam rock at best. The best song on here to me was The Sails of Charon where it actually felt like they tried to have a bit of an edge on it with some harsher tones. The rest of the album was way too poppy for me, starting with Steamrock Fever which was trying to be catchy but went on way too long especially for an intro track. Then We'll Burn The Sky was really chorus heavy, and so was most of the rest of this record. Most of the songs tended to lend into just repeating the song title too much with overly clean guitar tones and melodies. He's a Woman - She's a Man, what is that? Why? If I knew the meaning behind these songs would I like it more, because I just did not have that great of a time with this one. There's way to much music out there I would rather be listening to so that I can skip being negative towards the Scorpions.