SCORPIONS guitarist Matthias Jabs tells Billboard.com that the German headbangers have raided the vaults for "unfinished songs from the early '80s, leftovers from the Blackout album, Love At First Sting, which some people think is our best time." So far, he says, the quintet has worked on a dozen tracks with producers Mikael "Nord" Andersson and Martin Hansen, and more is on the way.

"We will dig in again and maybe have a selection of 16 to 18 songs and pick the best 12 from those," Jabs says. "It's actually very good material." The idea for the project, he adds, "came from the fans. They were the ones saying, 'There must be some extra material from those days,' and they were right."

Scorpions are adding new parts to the existing recordings, while most of the songs "didn't have proper lyrics, just blah blah blah blah working lyrics. So in almost every song the lyrics have to be re-written."

And while he acknowledges that while "the time reflects on the music" from three decades ago, Jabs promises the group is taking pains to modernize the new recordings. "We're doing it the way we are recording albums today," Jabs explains, "but the basic ideas, the riffs, the feel, the way they were written and arranged, we try to keep as much from the old recordings as possible. Thirty years later no one would come up with these ideas we came up with when we were younger, so we want to keep that spirit in there."

Jabs says the album, which is so far untitled, will come out in 2013. The same year may also see a documentary about the band by director Katja Von Garnier, who's been tailing Scorpions for the past year and a half of its world tour, capturing some live footage but mostly interviewing band and crew members as well as other musicians and friends of the group.

Read more at this location.

In headbanging anticipation of the Scorpions' three New York tri-state area shows on The Final Sting Tour, WVOX's Metal Mayhem host Matt O'Shaughnessy will welcome Matthias Jabs tonight, Friday, July 6th, at 7:15 PM, EST on 1460 AM and WVOX.com worldwide.

The New York area dates are as follows:

July

6 - PNC Bank Arts Center - Holmdel, New Jersey
7 - Jones Beach Theater - Wantagh, New York
9 - Mohegan Sun Arena - Uncasville, Connecticut