Virgin Killer is the fourth studio album by the German rock band Scorpions, released in 1976 by RCA Records.

[6] Virgin Killer "failed to attain any serious attention in the United States" but was "quite popular in Japan"[8] where it peaked at number 32 in the charts.

[10] Critic Vincent Jeffries of AllMusic contend that the album was "the first of four studio releases that really defined the Scorpions and their urgent metallic sound that was to become highly influential.

Lead guitarist Uli Jon Roth considers Virgin Killer and the previous release In Trance, his favourite Scorpions albums.

[12] The original cover art for the album depicted a nude ten-year-old girl,[13] with a shattered glass effect obscuring her genitalia.

The image was designed by Steffan Böhle[14] who was then the product manager for the West German branch of RCA Records.

[16] The band's rhythm guitarist Rudolf Schenker offers the following description of the circumstances behind the album cover: We didn't actually have the idea.

Virgin Killer is none other than the demon of our time, the less compassionate side of the societies we live in today—brutally trampling upon the heart and soul of innocence.

[18]In 2008, photographer Michael von Gimbut emphasized that he, his wife, the girl's mother, sister, and three female assistants had been present during the shooting and stated: "Back then, we loved and protected children and did not sleep with them.

Taken by Force originally featured cover art that depicted "children playing with guns at a military cemetery in France and some people found that offensive".

[22][23] Vocalist Klaus Meine explains that the band's penchant for controversial cover art stems from a desire "to go over the edge" and not "to offend some people or make the headlines [as] that would be stupid", contrasting guitarist Rudolf Schenker's earlier statement: "We're using this only to get attention.

"[3][4] In a 2010 interview Meine commented on the cover art again stating: Back in those days [the 1970s] it was RCA, our record label then, went over the edge with Virgin Killer.

There was always mixed feelings about it and even 30 years later it caused a scandal at Wikipedia because the site for that album was blocked and even the FBI was getting involved.

[25] In May 2008, the American far-right news site WorldNetDaily reported the cover image on Wikipedia to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[27] In December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based non-government organization, added the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to its internet blacklist due to concerns over legality of the image, which had been assessed as the lowest level of legal concern: "erotic posing with no sexual activity".