Your source for news about the Scorpions since 1996.

SCORPIONS have unveiled the cover artwork for their new single, “Peacemaker”. The track, which was originally scheduled for release on October 21, will now arrive on November 4.

The band said: “Here it is: the Peacemaker Cover Artwork! This photo captures perfectly how we feel as a band. So excited for you all to hear the new single. Pre-save it now to hear an exclusive snippet of the song!”

“Peacemaker” is the first single from SCORPIONS‘ 19th studio album, “Rock Believer”, which will be issued on February 11, 2022.

German hard rock legends SCORPIONS will release their 19th studio album, “Rock Believer”, on February 11, 2022. The LP’s first single, “Peacemaker”, will precede the full-length effort on October 21, 2021.

During the pandemic the band retreated to the studio in their German hometown in Hanover and started working on new songs.

“The album was written and recorded in the SCORPIONS DNA with core [Rudolf]Schenker/[Klaus] Meine compositions,” says singer Klaus Meine. “We recorded the album as a band live in one room, like we did in the ’80s.”

“Rock Believer” was recorded primarily at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany and was mixed at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany with engineer Michael Ilbert, who has earned multiple Grammy nominations for his mix work with producer Max Martin on albums by Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

SCORPIONS‘ new album will mark their first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of new and classic material.

SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with producer Greg Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, some of the initial work was done with Greg remotely, after whichSCORPIONS opted to helm the recordings themselves with the help of their engineer Hans-Martin Buff.

Meine previously told Talking Metal that the goal with using Fidelman to produce “Rock Believer” was to bring “the old vibe from albums like ‘Blackout’, ‘Love At First Sting’ or even ‘Lovedrive’. We try to focus on those albums and this attitude,” he said. “If we get there, who knows — it’s so many years later. But it’s the spirit and it’s the whole vibe around this album. This time, the focus is on the harder songs.”

According to Meine, SCORPIONS‘ new LP features “no outside writers at all,” unlike 2015’s“Return To Forever”, which was largely co-written by the album’s producers, Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen.

SCORPIONS will kick off their “Rock Believer” world tour in March 2022 in Las Vegas where the band will play nine shows as part of their residency at Planet Hollywood Hotel. Afterwards they will cross the Atlantic to Europe where they will play six concerts in France and six shows In Germany supported by Wolfgang Van Halen‘s new band MAMMOTH WVH.

SCORPIONS Rock Zone fan community members have exclusive first access to tickets and VIP packages beginning tomorrow morning, Thursday, September 30 at 10:00 a.m. CEST, with tickets going on-sale to the general public Friday, October 1 at 10 a.m. CEST.

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/watch-scorpions-rehearse-brand-new-song/

A short video of SCORPIONS rehearsing a brand new song, apparently titled “Seventh Sun”, at their studio in Hannover, Germany can be seen below.

Drummer Mikkey Dee uploaded the clip to his Instagram, writing in a caption: “SCORPIONS– rehearsing new songs for upcomming Tour. Pretty damn heavy.”

SCORPIONS recently completed work on a new album for a tentative early 2022 release. The LP was recorded primarily at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany and was mixed at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany with engineer Michael Ilbert, who has earned multiple Grammy nominations for his mix work with producer Max Martin on albums by Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

SCORPIONS‘ new album will mark their first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of new and classic material.

SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with producer Greg Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, some of the initial work was done with Greg remotely, after whichSCORPIONS opted to helm the recordings themselves with the help of their engineer Hans-Martin Buff.

Singer Klaus Meine previously told Talking Metal that the goal with using Fidelman to produce the new LP was to bring “the old vibe from albums like ‘Blackout’, ‘Love At First Sting’ or even ‘Lovedrive’. We try to focus on those albums and this attitude,” he said. “If we get there, who knows — it’s so many years later. But it’s the spirit and it’s the whole vibe around this album. This time, the focus is on the harder songs.”

According to Meine, SCORPIONS‘ new LP features “no outside writers at all,” unlike 2015’s“Return To Forever”, which was largely co-written by the album’s producers, Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen.

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/scorpions-drummer-mikkey-dee-i-dont-think-you-can-keep-the-world-shut-down-anymore/

SCORPIONS drummer Mikkey Dee spoke to the “RRBG Podcast”about the progress of the recording sessions of the band’s upcoming studio album. Recorded at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany, the disc will mark the German-Polish-Swedish hard rock legends’ first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of SCORPIONS‘ new and classic material.

“We’re working very hard here, wrapping up the recordings of the record,” Mikkey said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “And we are in the beginning of mixing; we started mixing the songs. We’ve been working since early fall on this album. It’s gonna be a great record. It’s all recorded live in the studio. And it’s a good vibe. It’s a harder record, and great songs. So it’s gonna be great to get this one released.”

Asked if the songs were already written before he got involved in the recording process, Deesaid: “Most of the stuff Rudolf [Schenker, guitar], Klaus [Meine, vocals] and Matthias[Jabs, guitar] have been writing, but then we’ve been putting it together in the studio together, kind of. But most of it’s been written, yes. But we worked really hard, all five [of us], on these tracks.”

Regarding when fans can expect to see the new SCORPIONS album released, Mikkey said: “I guess the release of the record is gonna have to be matched somehow to when we can actually start touring. I had the hopes up that we would release this this spring. That was the plan from the beginning, and I’ve been telling magazines about us releasing it in the spring, but it’s not gonna happen, I don’t think. Because it has to be matched to the touring — unless something completely crazy happens. But I would think in the fall or something like that, hopefully.

“It’s impossible [to predict when we will be able to tour again]; you can only hope,” he continued. “I’m done speculating in this shit, because once you get a little bit of a stream of hope, it’s been shut down immediately. One day you hear this; next day, you hear a completely opposite thing. All this fucking second wave [of COVID-19] and third wave. Now they’re talking about a fourth wave. And there’s mutations from every fucking country in the world. If we’re gonna continue adapting after that, we’re talking 15 years. So, I don’t know.

“But I’m hopeful,” Mikkey added. “And, yeah, I’m positive that we’re gonna have to get back out there soon. Because no matter what happens, I don’t think you can keep the world shut down anymore. It’s just the end.”

Dee went on to say that he knows the “seriousness of this virus,” having battled it himself in March of 2020. “I was influenza sick, thank gosh,” he explained. “But some people are not that lucky, of course, but most of the people are really the elderly people and people with underlying diseases that turn out to get really, really sick. And then, of course, you have some exceptions with young, healthy people, of course. And I realize the seriousness of it.

“The world has been shut down for one full year now,” he concluded. “And that can just not continue like that. It’s a disaster in so many other ways than the virus. That’s how I see it. It’s very, very unfortunate.”

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/scorpions-were-forced-to-abandon-plan-to-work-with-producer-greg-fidelman-on-new-album/

SCORPIONS have abandoned their plans to work with producer Greg Fidelman on their new album.

The German-Polish-Swedish hard rock legends spent the last few months recording the effort at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany. Tentatively due later this year, the disc will mark SCORPIONS‘ first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of new and classic material.

SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, some of the initial work was done with Greg remotely, after which SCORPIONSopted to helm the recordings themselves with the help of their engineer Hans-Martin Buff.

During an appearance on MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn‘s “No Fuckin’ Regrets With Robb Flynn” podcast, SCORPIONS drummer Mikkey Dee stated about the band’s decision to proceed without Fidelman (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Unfortunately, because of this corona, we could not come to L.A., and [Greg] could not come to Germany. So we were trying for a whole month, via Zoom, to work on songs. And then he was with us [virtually] in the early evening, and we were working together on certain songs and arrangements. But it was almost impossible for him to get our feeling and for us to understand his feeling. So we decided that it was probably better that we were trying to do this on our own. And that’s what we’ve been doing. But I’m sure Greg would have put his magic ears to this album, and it would have been fantastic too. But, unfortunately, we had to make the best out of the situation. We were even talking about breaking in the fall, maybe in October or something already. We talked about maybe breaking the record and then come back and maybe fly to L.A. in February or March. We thought it’d be open by now. But look, here we are — it’s even worse than it was in October. So if we would have been sitting here now and broke the recording October, we would have wasted six months here.”

Elaborating on the early recording sessions with Fidelman, Dee said: “He was listening and working on this with us. But it’s really hard to get that feeling, of course. And when he wanted to change some stuff, we were sitting in the studio going, ‘What does he fucking mean here?’ ‘But it sounds great here.’ So it’s very hard to communicate [virtually]. But maybe next record — who knows? [So] we decided to move forward and continue recording and do the best we could. And we have Hans-Martin as an engineer. He’s brilliant, by the way. He worked on a lot, a lot of stuff for a lot of musicians. And he’s so fast, and he has a great ear, and he feels everybody on their instrument, which is important. He knows drums, he knows bass, he knows guitars, and they speak German as well, so that helps out when they can go at it and work on some stuff. Now, with this done, I think this is the only way we have to do it, and I think we chose the right way. Because if we would have stuck to really have Greg on this, we couldn’t even have started now. So who knows? Maybe we could have started in June or July [of this year]. We captured a moment when we all were fresh and really wanted to make a new album. Who knows what the feeling would have been if we started in June?”

According to Mikkey, the other members of the SCORPIONS should be completed with all the recordings in about two weeks, after which the album will be mixed by Michael Ilbert at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany.