Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Hoffmann, Wolf
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2016
Length: 48:23
Rating: 4.5/5
Wolf Hoffmann is a name everybody in the metal world knows. The guy has lived in the US for years and, among other things, makes a living as a professional photographer. Back in 1976 he co-founded the German metal band Accept. For all his loyalty to the Accept name, which his heart has been sworn to through decades of making music and will be until the grave, in 1997 Wolf found the time to record his first solo studio album, »Classical«. Even then he introduced his own take on a formula that fuses the raw essence of a heavy metal riff with classical music, which, for example, went a long way toward explaining how Accept classics like Metal Heart were arranged.
After a hefty nineteen years, and after the revival of the giants of German metal craft Accept, who put out three excellent new studio albums between 2009 and 2014 (with another one already in the works), Wolf is back with his second solo studio album, which he named »Headbangers Symphony«.
Here, too, Wolf carries over the expressive recipe of its predecessor »Classical«. Genre-wise, it’s basically a new neoclassical metal album. Completely instrumental, of course. For this one he again picked a dozen well-known classical pieces from the Romantic era, performed for him by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, and he wove elements of heavy metal into the orchestra’s work in an incredibly tasteful and smooth way. And here’s the really important bit: Hoffmann managed to deliver a record that is extremely easy to listen to. In any daily mood we get thrown into, day in, day out. Whether you’re digging up the garden, knitting a new sweater, or, in a bizarre caricature of a scenario, memorizing the process of building DNA double helixes out of amino acids, which is a bit like learning the phone book »by heart«.
The opening track gives away the whole point of the album right away. Wolf adapted the Scherzo from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and slipped in, with incredible polish and taste, the main riff of one of the best songs Accept have made in their new era, the one with vocalist Mark Tornillo. We’re talking, of course, about the outstanding Teutonic Terror. Right from the start Hoffmann nailed the essence of it: the classical arrangement crosses perfectly with the raw power of heavy metal phrasing.
Wolf, who set himself plenty of artistic challenges across all the compositions, goes about it with finesse, and at the same time makes full use of his incredibly honed feel for musical accessibility and for keeping everything he tackles compact. The essential parts, meaning the motifs created by the giants of classical composition, he actually leaves untouched, or he works in arrangements of his own guitar playing in such a way that those instantly recognizable classical motifs keep their dominant position in the arrangements throughout. That’s how Wolf keeps succeeding later in the album, when he takes on Modest Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain, or right after it Bizet’s Je Crois Entendre Encore, where the tampering with the original motif is practically zero (he handled Massenet’s Meditation, just before the end of the album, in a similar way).
Just as effectively and tastefully as he crossed the opening Scherzo with the Teutonic Terror riff, Hoffmann also went at pairing up with Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, where he again weighed down the classical part with a heavy metal riff that fits it like a glove. On Albinoni’s Adagio in G major, Hoffmann steps into the central position and reworks the whole arrangement of the lead motif for guitar, so the guitar carries the core of the melody. Something similar happens to Beethoven’s Pathétique in the second half of the album. Mozart’s 40th Symphony got a special treatment: Wolf changed the tempo of the piece itself, so the whole thing sounds noticeably faster than the original, which will be right up the alley of symphonic power metal fans too. In other words, it’s an effective implant of a heavy guitar riff, over which Wolf lays the lead melody that tastefully follows the string rhetoric of the orchestra. Hoffmann pulled off an especially nifty adaptation when he took on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, much like Swan Lake, got one of the more interesting adaptations on the album, and in it Wolf Hoffmann once again shows off his refined sophistication in how he approaches playing electric guitar in a neoclassical format. The guitar takes over the arrangement written for voice, and the rhythm itself is adapted too. And »Headbangers Symphony« wouldn’t be complete for Hoffmann if it skipped the greatness of J.S. Bach’s legacy. So right at the tail end of the album Hoffmann slotted in Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, or rather a variation of its second movement, »Air« (full title »Air on the G String«), which wraps up Hoffmann’s vision of playing electric guitar the neoclassical way, inspired by the giants of classical music, in truly triumphant fashion.
»Headbangers Symphony« is a record made entirely without pretension, and it keeps up an incredibly classy, highly listenable vibe from start to finish, driven by compact musicality. Hoffmann never »shreds up« the arrangements by scattering wild arpeggios around to try to rival the strings. Y.J. Malmsteen would very likely do something like that in a heartbeat. Quite the opposite. »Headbangers Symphony« gives a brilliant insight into where Accept’s music is born and where it comes from. It lays bare the point of what inspires Hoffmann’s songwriting and character. This is an album of incredible listenability and, to say it once more, an album of the right kind of leveling out, the ideal middle path for combining classical and metal musical elements.
Wolf Hoffmann – Scherzo (Ludwig Van Beethoven):
Line-up
Wolf Hoffmann – guitar
Jason Bowld – drums
Pat McDonald – drums
Peter Baltes – bass
Matthias Rethmann – bass
John Billings – bass
Melo Mafali – keyboards
Czech National Symphony Orchestra – strings
Production
Wolf Hoffmann
Track list
01. Scherzo (L. v. Beethoven)
02. Night On Bald Mountain (M. Mussorgsky)
03. Je Crois Entendre Encore (G. Bizet)
04. Double Cello Concerto In G Minor (A. Vivaldi)
05. Adagio (T. Albinoni)
06. Symphony No. 40 (W. A. Mozart)
07. Swan Lake (P. Tchaikovsky)
08. Madame Butterfly (G. Puccini)
09. Pathétique (L. v. Beethoven)
10. Meditation (J. Massenet)
11. Air On The G String (J. S. Bach)
