SCORPIONS - New album not the end of the world! Page 3
by Martin Popoff

The production job on this album pulses warmly with power. Turns out that teamwork was key in this department as well.

"Yes, Desmond mentioned that, 'You know guys, I want to do the overview. Plus I'm going to do the vocals. But for the guitars, I have a new upcoming guy named James Michael, and he is the guy who will work with bass, drums and guitars.' So in this case it was a good idea to work in two studios, and really watch each other so that nobody went too far. Then we started doing all the material. We had around 18 songs. First of all we had 14 or 15, and then we noticed that this album was becoming too dark, and it was important for us that this album has the dark side of humanity, but also the hopeful side of humanity. And we had to write three or four more songs to make the balance right. And also for us on this album was to go not too far with our sound, create a bridge between the older style of Scorpions and the up-to-date style of Scorpions. So that the way we were working on it, everything came naturally, and really arranging, working on it, some talk about it."

"And then things were building up, building up, until the end of February. Time for mixing the album was happening, but for us it was a little bit difficult. Because we already had an invitation from Vladimir Putin to play the Kremlin Palace at the beginning of March. Which means we had to leave, and do the mixing online. So we were on tour then, in Moscow, in the Baltic states, in Kiev, in Kazakhstan, and on this trip, we got the mixes online, and we had to make our notes and everything, send it over to the guys. So it was a very interesting procedure, a different production. In this case, everything was not planned."

Back to the message of the album, which is either a complicated one, a muddled one, or a few themes running concurrently, Rudolph figures, "It was teamwork, being inspired, by, let's say, lifting up the consciousness, the global collective consciousness of people, like Linkin Park or Bono is doing it. To let people know and to be more aware of the planet here, that we can't fool around with nature too much because we will hurt ourselves. Everything is connected. When something is happening in Brazil, in the rain forest, the lungs of the world, it gets killed, then we will get hit terribly. So a good thing about Humanity Hour 1, when we started our American tour, we started in South America in Manaus, in the jungle."

SCORPIONS - New album not the end of the world! Page 4