Well, it was quite a kick in the ass to learn the Scorps will hang it up after this, their swansong. In some ways, I anticipated Klaus & Rudi going on forever (German engineering being what it is), but alas. Their last great album was Blackout (excluding the 2006 live Wacken platters, witnessed in person) and since, they’ve periodically come up with a couple decent tracks, as often is their forte, usually acoustic tinged ballads. Of the releases from the last 2+ decades, can only listen to Unbreakable with any consistency. Dating back to classics like ‘Holiday’, ‘Still Loving You’ even the much ballyhooed ‘Winds Of Change’, slower, more emotive numbers have made the deepest impact, mainly because the (early) music rocked so hard (for the time period). Now, in a batch of mid-tempo numbers, the ballads seemed forced, like this album’s solider in Iraq tale, ‘The Good Die Young’, featuring ex-Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen. As they get older, the band (re-) gains an affinity for the music they know/knew best, what they grew up on, 50s American rock n roll. Actually the pick of the litter is a full blown rocker, as close to the vintage years as they’re likely to come, at their age, ‘Turn You On’. OK, it’s a little disconcerting to hear 60+ men singing about “sweat hitting the ceiling,” but that’s infinitely more palatable than the underground S&M; world of a similarly minded ‘Slave Me’. The disc ends with ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’… who says Germans don’t have a sense of humor? Auf wiedersehen freude.