After finishing the North American tour with Whitesnake in late March 2003, band members gathered at Scorpio Sound Studio to record the first batch of demos. They demoed a total of 16 songs and none of them made the album. A second demo session started in June 2003 and during that session the band demoed songs that Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker, Jabs and Kottak had written individually. In the late July and early August, Scorpions embarked on a three-week tour where Kottak spent most of his time writing, demoing, and playing guitar. He explained: "On some songs I only play for Matthias, some only for Rudolf, and the sensitive ones I play for Klaus". On 1 September 2003, the band went back again to Scorpio Sound Studio for a two-week demo session and they recorded other 20 songs. Kottak said about the songs: "We now felt we have the meat of the record...8 to 10 "good ones"".