Scorpions - Fly to the Rainbow

Long before stadium anthems, Scorpions were busy stretching hard rock into strange, psychedelic shapes, and Fly to the Rainbow from 1974 catches them mid-transformation.

The German band's second album arrived after guitarist Michael Schenker left for UFO, and his replacement, Uli Jon Roth, changed everything. Roth's fluid, Hendrix-inspired playing, equal parts blues and cosmic wonder, pushed the group toward something more adventurous, and the record mixes muscular riffs with spacey, progressive detours that hint at the heavier future to come.

Speedy's Coming opens with a punchy, riff-driven blast and Klaus Meine's soaring voice, while They Need a Million hands the microphone to Rudolf Schenker. Roth takes the lead vocal on the brooding Drifting Sun, and the title track unfurls into a sprawling, multi-part epic full of shifting moods, dreamy interludes and searing guitar that rewards patient, headphone-friendly listening.

For anyone who knows Scorpions mainly from their 1980s heyday, this is a fascinating look at the band in their wild, experimental youth, when the riffs were already huge but the songs were still free to wander wherever the moment took them. It is the sound of a great rock band discovering what it could become, and it still burns with plenty of fire half a century later.