Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: January 29, 2021
Production: Andy Sneap
Album length: 52.16 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8.0/10
The year is 2021, Accept, and? A new album. Accept, founded in 1968 by Udo Dirkschneider and (later famed producer) Michael Wagener, are considered the first real German heavy metal band. They’ve lived through the good and the bad. The days of playing hide-and-seek are long gone. There were highs, there were lows. Then came 2009 and what looks like a truly final reunion, because this time Wolf Hoffmann decided to take Accept all the way. Wherever that may lead. After “The Rise of Chaos” (2017), which also brought them to the Metaldays festival in Tolmin one last time in the summer of 2018, Peter Baltes left the band that fall. Besides Hoffmann, he was part of the lineup that had solidified in 1976 enough to move on to a professional career. That left Hoffmann as the last of the band’s pillars standing. After the split with Baltes, when the question came up of whether it was credible to carry on under the Accept name, the unshakable guitarist had a few options on the table. But the compass needle stayed pointed exactly where Accept aimed it at the 2009 reunion. No retreat.
Wolf Hoffmann even expanded the quintet, and in 2019 Accept grew into a sextet with no fewer than three guitarists, though of course only Wolf is officially credited as the band’s sole lead guitarist. That said, it’s clear that Uwe Lulis, who’s also a scene veteran – he got Grave Digger back on their feet through the nineties – and the newest member Philip Shouse can absolutely solo their asses off. And so “Too Mean To Die” came into the world. The sixteenth studio album by the mighty Accept. The band is too mean to die. Too venomous. Simply too stubborn, if not downright indestructible. What matters most is the realization that “Too Mean To Die” is once again a damn good album, one that thoroughly fixes the slightly pale impression left by “The Rise of Chaos”. That one signaled that Accept had run out of ideas. In the latest era of the band, meaning 2009 to today, “Too Mean To Die” brings Accept back to the level of “Stalingrad” (2012) and “Blood of the Nations” (2010), or at least damn close to it. And if nothing else, “Too Mean To Die” is the darkest, even the most ominous Accept album since singer Mark Tornillo joined. This time Accept went all-in on the production, and “Too Mean To Die” may well be the most uncompromising and crushing album since the 2009 reunion. Production-wise, it’s an album you can only bow down to. The answer? Good old Andy Sneap once again. Enough said.
Once again Accept have come up with an album that’s theirs from head to toe. A pure-blooded member of the German (Teutonic) school of heavy metal. It carries everything. Everything Accept were and still are known for. The album delivers a catchy, piercing series of direct jabs through its phrasing, while the development of the compositions never neglects, not even for a second, a flirtation with elements of classical music. Hoffmann has even more than expected devoted himself to polishing the details this time. You can sense it at every step of the songs’ development. The solos are built from multiple parts. They’re structured in especially fine detail when it comes to linking them together, and they can follow several modulations within the same song. The mid-eight passages are Hoffmann’s dessert and honestly a real little masterpiece, because Wolf managed to once again knit the brow of these moments and dramatize the mood, instilling the songs with a brilliant dose of dynamics where the listener can truly revel in his guitar wizardry at every turn.
There’s more fine mechanics and filigree detail work on the compositions this time than usual, and you won’t believe it. “Too Mean To Die” creeps into the ear even more slowly than your average Accept album. There’s no single dominant standout track like “Teutonic Terror” or “Pandemic” (“Blood of the Nations”, 2009), and yet. The album is diverse in terms of songwriting. Given the tried-and-true Accept formula we all know, surprisingly diverse. It’s certainly seasoned with a series of brilliant wrecking balls that flood the brain’s association cortex with a frightening dose of napalm. That’s what the opener “Zombie Apocalypse” promises, and it’s one of the highlights of the whole album. The album starts bursting at the seams with ferocity right away, as Accept attack from every angle. But the title track that follows adds even more destructive aggression and terror than the opener. The title track is the most bristling song on the album. It’s also the fastest, and at this point Accept, and primarily Hoffmann, deliver one of the most thrilling adventures in the realm of boundless guitar wit (multi-part solos, the way they link up, the entry into and exit from the mid-eight passage). Both songs are also incredibly dark and doomy. Quite a few such moments follow. But the opening alone is bursting with primal metal erection.
“The Undertaker” is a song that stands apart from the rest of the material. It builds its atmosphere in a distinctly graduated way. It opens on clean guitars – pay attention to Hoffmann’s tone control –, it’s mid-tempo, and the band develops a real sense of menace in it, revealing an intensely dark, hopeless mood, in which Mark Tornillo especially impresses with his approach, singing the verses in a clean style, which is rare for him, and adding a guttural edge in the chorus that sends a proper deathly shiver down your spine. That vocal line is brilliantly harmonized with two more vocal lines. A higher and a lower one. That guarantees an intensified graveyard atmosphere, while slyly slipping in a pinch of pomp. On top of that there are thundering male choir chants, which is a must for Accept (there are several such musts on the album). This is definitely a song of a kind Accept have never tried in their career. No wonder it was picked as one of the album’s singles.
Songs that would invite you to a party are just a pinch this time. One is “Overnight Sensation”, which brings one of the most classically built phrases, with which Accept seek a true-believer connection to the eighties, and right behind it that feeling is joined by the phrase in “No Ones Master”, a new brilliant blend of aggression and anthemic swagger. The sped-up “Not My Problem” can be counted in this camp too.
A special treat on the album is “Symphony of Pain”. It’s a song where a “sharpened” Wolf Hoffmann steps firmly into the foreground, exploding with a plethora of guitar acrobatics like those described in one of the paragraphs above, and especially astounding with his guitar virtues. In them he doesn’t forget to pay tribute to L. Van Beethoven (playfully weaving in the figures from the 5th and 9th symphonies). “Symphony of Pain” is the most dynamic composition on the album. In every respect. Also in terms of the various drum fills in the transitional parts, while the aforementioned guitar insert from Wolf Hoffmann is simply fantastic. Definitely one of the album’s highlights. Then there’s “Sucks To Be You”. A song with a pronounced groove, brought in particularly by Christopher Williams’ rock-solid rhythmic backbone, while Tornillo really lets loose with a socially critical scream here. The singer is by no means short of rage across this album.
“How Do We Sleep” surprises with a tribal opening rhythm, over which a folky weave of guitar harmonies in thirds is stretched, followed by a switch into that classic Accept “drive” that instantly gets under your skin and is typical of the band’s songwriting over the last decade. Tornillo is brilliant in it. What lets him show off his vocal character in this style is the excellent connection between the verse, the pre-chorus and the distinctly rapacious yet again catchy and dark chorus. The lyrics: “Tell me how we can sleep tonight, when the whole world is crashing down to hell? Explain to me how we can justify this?” Tornillo sang them with such passion that they easily move and stir the listener. Tornillo is the tipping point, whose deeply felt performance at key moments on the album brings back that unique feeling of a song simply sucking the listener in and carrying them away. That means Accept managed to get a certain kind of magic onto the album too, the kind that bewitches the listener. On this album Tornillo has surely delivered the best performance of his career as the band’s singer. Hats off to Mark. His subtlety and softness really shine in “The Best Is Yet To Come”. We’re used to him just screaming and screaming. But here he delivers his other side. An outstanding track with a similarly graduated mood to the one that develops in “The Undertaker”, except that the feeling of menace is replaced by melancholy.
A mix of neoclassical elements and oriental melodies is tacked on at the end. Of course, it’s all skillfully woven into the unbridled sharpness of metal grinding. We’re talking about the instrumental “Samson & Delilah”. A song that would sooner belong on a Hoffmann solo album isn’t really a required part of this product. The band knew it, so they put the song at the tail end of the album. Anyone familiar with Wolf Hoffmann’s solo work won’t be surprised by this instrumental. Relative to the Accept catalog, though, it’s still a little bewildering. The song is very good, but as said, optional reading. Even so, fans of this kind of metal can be thoroughly grateful for it. It can also be understood as an extended instrumental outro from the album. It carries a well-crafted main motif, head and tail.
The heap of solo embellishments at every step only proves Hoffmann’s exceptional commitment to bringing out the best he knows and can do. Perhaps Hoffmann was driven by extra motivation, also out of spite at the claims that after Baltes left there was no real point in Accept continuing. Just as Udo Dirkschneider is the one and only voice, Baltes is the one and only bassist, but still. The sound of “Too Mean To Die” is top-notch. Immaculate. The bass lines dig deep and are intensely contrasted in the production. Tornillo sings as if the last day of humanity were in front of him. One of his best performances. Williams, with his venomous rolling and torpedoing on the double bass drum pedals, has provided an exceptional rhythmic backbone into which the guitar phrases are woven. This is an album that will delight Accept’s faithful. After a somewhat idealess predecessor, “Too Mean To Die” is exactly what its title dictates. Indestructible. Unbreakable. An uncut diamond from the vast expanses of the primal, original heavy metal galaxy. If this is perhaps the last Accept album, it’s clear Hoffmann and the gang will be going out in grand style. But it seems this isn’t the end of the story yet. How nice is that, right?
Key tracks: Zombie Apocalypse, Too Mean To Die, The Undertaker, Symphony of Pain, How Do We Sleep
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Zombie Apocalypse
2. Too Mean To Die
3. Overnight Sensation
4. No Ones Master
5. The Undertaker
6. Sucks To Be You
7. Symphony Of Pain
8. The Best Is Yet To Come
9. How Do We Sleep
10. Not My Problem
11. Samson And Delilah
Line-up:
Mark Tornillo – vocals
Wolf Hoffmann – guitar, lead guitar
Uwe Lulis – guitar
Philip Shouse – guitar
Martin Motnik – bass
Christopher Williams – drums
