Accept – a Teutonic machine that has been grinding relentlessly for more than 35 years (2012)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 12 June 2026

Photos: Jerneja Jerak

Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Interview date: October 25, 2012

There’s nothing better than an interview with a famous band that you get to do right on your home turf. Accept! The long-living heavy metal fortress from Germany, born in 1976 in the city of Solingen! Finally in Ljubljana. After the 2009 reunion, with two new albums in their pocket and constant touring, Accept are reborn and thirsty for fresh blood again!

Accept first visited Slovenia last year, when they played Metal Camp 2011 as one of the main headliners of the night. At the beginning of April this year the new studio album »Stalingrad« came out, and the band did the first leg of the European tour around that time. On the second leg, after coming back from a successful stint across the US, Accept finally stopped in Ljubljana too, and we got the chance to have a few words, before the show, with the band’s driving force, founding and original member and guitarist Wolf Hoffmann.

RockLine: Barely a year and a half has passed and there’s already a new Accept album out. You named it »Stalingrad«. What’s the story behind choosing the name Stalingrad?
Wolf: A moment of inspiration. So it’s not a concept album. We were captivated by the story of the Battle of Stalingrad, which is only dedicated to the album’s title track. One day I watched a documentary about it, then I read a history book describing everything that went down in the Battle of Stalingrad. It’s an incredibly fascinating, but at the same time very sad story. We could’ve picked any song on the album as the title, but the song Stalingrad is the moment on the album with the strongest message and it somehow sums up the point of our new album as a whole. We in Accept don’t glorify war, we’re not sending out messages that would incite war. Quite the opposite, this sad story, as part of human history and a tragedy that took so many, many innocent lives, really touched all of us..

RockLine: When you watch the video for the excellent song Teuthonic Terror from the album »Blood Of The Nations«, where you’re wielding your Flyin’ V on top of a burning tank, it’s not hard to connect the band’s next step – »Stalingrad«, that is.
Wolf: Absolutely. Heavy metal is aggression. The two go together. Like a key and a lock.

RockLine: Can you tell us how the album »Stalingrad« came together?
Wolf: Very early on, after we wrapped up the tour last year, that was last August, we unanimously decided that our plan was to put out an album the following year, in the spring. Everybody was on board, the management, the label. So, to get a new album out right away the next April. That’s why we started working on the new album just a week after the end of our live activities in August 2011. Basically, Peter (Peter Baltes, Accept bass, editor’s note) and I put together the structure of the songs. We meet up at my house in Nashville, for example, or somewhere else. It took us a few weeks to write the riffs and jam them out together – meaning to try out how they work. So we needed a few weeks to put together the basic frameworks and cores of the songs for the upcoming album. Then Mark (Mark Tornillo, Accept vocals, editor’s note) joined us, shaped the vocal lines and brought the verses into the songs. That’s usually our working process for every album.

RockLine: Would you point out any important difference between the previous album »Blood Of The Nations« and the current »Stalingrad«, if that even makes sense?
Wolf: We told ourselves we didn’t want a different album. In our opinion »Blood Of The Nations« is a perfect album. We were really happy with it. So we basically wanted to repeat it. The plan was to write new songs that would be just as good as the ones for »Blood Of The Nations«. We didn’t want to change anything, we used the same producer, the same approach to the work.

RockLine: The cover slightly reminds me of the cover of your »Restless And Wild« album, though. Crossed Flyin’ V guitars on fire….
Wolf: It really does. Just faintly. Let me tell you a little secret. We already had the cover for »Stalingrad« prepared and picked. Completely done. That first version of the cover looks a lot like the print on the shirt we sell at our shows. The motif was a Russian monument, in the style of typical Russian propaganda from days gone by. All of us in the band loved the cover to bits. But many people who saw it – that cover proposal – didn’t agree with it. They warned us not to use it. They linked it to German Nazism. None of that made any sense to me. In order to keep the peace, not stir up ghosts, not piss off any of our fans, we changed our minds at the last minute and picked a different motif for the cover of »Stalingrad«. »Damn it,« I said, »I just don’t want this!« But in the end I had to do it and give in.

RockLine: Last year you recorded your entire show at the famous »Bang Your Head!!!« festival in Balingen (Germany) and promised a DVD release. Then all we got was footage of two songs, in a special limited edition of the new record. Have you dropped that plan, or will the DVD come out after all?
Wolf: It’ll come out. But before that we wanted to record and release one more album. »Stalingrad«, that is. Now we’re ready to really put out the full live DVD next year. We’ll also have more time to put it together before we head back into the studio to write new songs.

RockLine: You’ve also already been booked for the next edition of the »Bang Your Head!!!« festival – so in 2013.
Wolf: Yes. That’s absolutely true!

RockLine: Andy Sneap is clearly, even after you kept him on as producer for Stalingrad, a totally trustworthy name for Accept in this new era. How did the collaboration between him and the band come about?
Wolf: We love his way of working. We couldn’t have found anyone better for Accept in these new times than Andy Sneap. You know, he’s totally real in the studio, down to earth, how should I put it,… just “another guy”. Plenty of producers like to make up all sorts of stuff and come out with a whole pile of special demands and conditions for their work. They can complicate things and the work process big time. Andy became our friend in no time. You know, you can get a great producer, but his head isn’t tuned to the same frequency as the heads of the band whose album he’s producing. Then you’ve got producers who are musicians. Some play instruments, others don’t. Andy has both sides. He’s a musician and a producer. He’s a guitarist, so he gets the point of a metal riff, he understands how a metal riff and a guitar have to sound in the production of a heavy metal album! Andy Sneap is also a huge Accept fan, so he understands exactly what Accept fans want to hear. He’s a very all-round worker. On top of all that, he also has a studio with all the latest high-tech gear, so we don’t have to worry about our traditional sound accidentally losing its edge in the new era. Andy Sneap is simply the perfect man to work with Accept.

RockLine: So was it also a completely natural and logical choice for Accept to invite N.W.O.B.H.M. legends Hell as the opener on the European tour this April?
Wolf: Of course. Andy is our friend and we all thought it was a really good idea to have Hell play with us on this tour. Besides, Hell are a really good band and now that they’re active again, they deserve some serious exposure in front of the crowds.

RockLine: I haven’t seen anywhere that Accept released a promo video for any of the songs on the new album »Stalingrad«. Is there any plan for that?
Wolf: About a week ago a fan-made, amateur, so home-made, video came out for the song Shadow Soldiers. So our fans put the video together themselves. It’s a great video and I recommend you check it out, if you haven’t yet. Otherwise, we were under huge time pressure and so we didn’t manage to put together a single video. We were constantly on concert stages, you see. But at least we got this video for the song Shadow Soldiers, amateur in nature, sure, but really well made.

RockLine: Shadow Soldiers has one of the nicest and most gripping riffs on the new record, and I’m really glad you’re playing it live on this tour too.
Wolf: Oh, thanks! And we’ll play it tonight too. Here in Ljubljana. The fans took it really well yesterday too, when we played in Zagreb, Croatia.

RockLine: Mark Tornillo has been with you for two years now. On stage he seems even more relaxed and confident. What can you tell us about him, how happy are you with him?
Wolf: Man, I can’t even tell you how many shows, after we’ve been on the road around the world two or three times, your level of confidence and relaxation grows, that’s for sure, and you can feel it. Mark, as a singer and frontman, is exactly what Accept needs. He’s also become a great friend of ours. In that time we’ve grown together as a team, as a band. Mark has the right vocal range. He sings great and communicates great with the crowd, leading them through the shows.

RockLine: In your private life you also work as a professional photographer. When did you get hooked on that?
Wolf: In the nineties, after Accept took a long break… you know, photography has always been my big passion, my hobby, I could even say a kind of obsession. When Accept shut down for a long time in the nineties, I told myself: »This is what I’d really like to do in life, besides music!« Music is my first love, photography my second. I built a successful career and I still shoot today. Whenever I have the time. Not much when we’re on tour, though. I can only do one thing well at a time. I can’t do two at once.

RockLine: What drew you to decide to become a musician back when you were still a kid?
Wolf: Hmmm… I remember the first band,… it was The Beatles. Back then I listened to the radio and, of course, the pop on the radio at the time. At first I didn’t think much about the music I was listening to. Then I was visiting a friend who was a huge rock fan. He had a record collection of Black Sabbath, Humble Pie, Uriah Heep,… He’s the one who actually led me into this world. My eyes were popping out as a whole new world opened up in front of me. I loved the energy this music unleashed. But the band that changed my life more than anything is definitely AC/DC. When I saw AC/DC in 1976, it was an experience of personal enlightenment! I’d never felt the kind of energy that band was unleashing from the stage before, not once.

RockLine: And you can feel that in Accept’s music too.
Wolf: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. As far as Accept go, our biggest influences are Judas Priest, AC/DC and Deep Purple. You can find a lot of “little Deep Purple-ish” things in our music. Mostly because every single one of us in the band loves Deep Purple’s music.

RockLine: Does any of the newer acts grab you with their original music these days?

Wolf: I keep an eye on what’s happening on the scene every now and then, but pretty irregularly. There are lots of new bands that are technically very good. There’s a lot of “quirky” stuff that can be musically appealing. But if I’m totally honest, no newer act grabs me enough that I’d start actively listening to them or buy their CD. I belong to the old school, you see.

RockLine: What are Accept’s short-term goals going forward?
Wolf: The tour moved from the US to Europe. Now we’re in the second week of the European leg. We’ll be playing live until Christmas. Next year we’re playing festivals. A live DVD release follows sometime next year and of course, next year we’ll start writing material for our next studio album again. So don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long to get a new Accept record. You know, as a rule, Accept can’t record new albums year after year. That one-year gap between »Blood Of The Nations« and »Stalingrad« was just an exception this time.

RockLine: Wolf, thanks for your time, I wish you a great show here in Ljubljana and a successful run of the tour.
Wolf: Thanks. It was really nice talking to you.