Scorpions release Sting in the Tail
Sting in the Tail is the seventeenth studio album by German heavy metal band Scorpions.
It was released on March 19, 2010 in Europe (March 14 in Greece) and was released on March 23 in North America. It is likely their last studio album.
In an interview with the Songfacts website, Rudolf Schenker explained that their goal was to update their sound from their classic period in the 1980s. He explained: "If you take the best song elements from the '80s albums, and put these on one album, you come up with the Sting in the Tail album. So in this case we tried to re-invent the Scorpions sound from the '80s, using the same DNA after putting in a modern twist, to make it sound like today's music."
The album has a duet featuring the Finnish symphonic metal singer Tarja Turunen, in the song "The Good Die Young".
A tentative title for the album was Humanity: Hour II, however this was eventually scrapped.
First week sales in the United States were 18,500 copies sold placing it at No. 23 on the Billboard 200. In Germany the album debuted at No. 2, but fell in its second week to No. 3, in France at No. 16 and in Greece at No. 1. The album also peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Rock Charts.