by Barry Weber

The Scorpions' two previous releases, Blackout and Love at First Sting, were mostly successful due to the band's ability to adjust with the times; with Blackout, they used the classic power rock introduced by bands like Van Halen, and for Sting they used similar melodies, but with a harder, tighter sound akin to the work of such bands as Dokken and REO Speedwagon. With Savage Amusement, the group's first studio recording in almost four years, the Scorpions experimented with more polished pop melodies that Def Leppard and the like had made popular. The end result is polished and often predictable music that, while good, on the whole fails to be as infectious as the music on their previous albums. Die-hard fans will certainly find their share of worthwhile songs, such as "Don't Stop at the Top" and "Believe in Love," but they still may find Savage Amusement to be incomparable to its predecessors.