Musicians and their fans tend to have very different views of their most iconic work. The former often hanker to go back and ‘improve’ on it, while fans are invariably happy with the records they fell in love with in the first place.
So while UJR’s decision to rehash Scorpions material from the mid-70s era when his nimble licks first helped establish them on the world stage is understandable, for all but the most insatiable Rothophiles the results are less than essential.
The songs still stand up, as does Roth’s ever-lithe, elastic fretwork, and in British singer Nathan James he’s found an able rock belter, whose falsetto is particularly impressive on We’ll Burn The Sky, to complement similarly skyscraping string-mangling from his boss. But when you’re a fan of the originals it’s all a little more diverting than a superior covers band./o:p
