Nothing Beats Watching Your Own Video With Wolf Hoffmann Soloing on Top of a Burning Tank (2011)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 12 June 2026

Location: Munich / Tonhalle (tour bus) / Germany
Interview date: 10.02.2011

Peter Baltes is the legendary bassist of the most legendary German heavy metal band of all time. The pioneers of Teutonic metal in Europe. Accept. The embodiment of raw essence, live-wire sharpness and the efficient hammering home of swaggering guitar phrases, they’re now the stuff of guitar textbooks and the holy guideline of every fresh-faced fan who wants to try his hand at playing heavy metal. Over seventeen million albums sold worldwide over their career! Comeback kings on the scene, with their first album in fifteen years! The mighty Accept, that is. On a new world tour. Never more fired up and committed. As if they’d been born again, and with them 1980 once more. The years run by and pass in silence, but the character doesn’t change one bit.

Peter Baltes made no secret of his incredible fire and sparkle in this exceptional chat. His drive and extremely positive outlook were fueled by the successful return to the concert stages, as well as the salvos of huge approval from the music world, which was starved for Accept’s music just as Accept were hungry to conquer the stages. The beast has gone berserk and totally wild! Once again it has snapped its chains to hammer out and serve you a dose of the purest, most authentic clarity, as understood by the elemental, old-school approach to forging guitar riffs of pure European origin.

How happy are you with how the current tour is going? Is everything going to plan?
Peter: It might sound a little strange, but to be totally honest, I’ve never felt as good as I do on this tour. We’re all really good friends, including Mark (Mark Tornillo ed. note), our new singer. Everything’s going great. Everybody loves our new studio album, the shows are very successful, and every night when we talk to fans after the gig, they tell us it’s the best show they’ve seen in their lives. We’re very, very happy.

So no stress whatsoever. The best thing that could happen in this situation. You can let go and enjoy it.
Peter: You know, before we jumped into this we knew roughly what to expect. And yet we were very surprised, because we really didn’t expect such a huge success. As far as the tour goes. We’d been off the scene for 15 years. So you can’t just come back, say “Well, look! Here we are!” and beat your chest. And you know, every morning when we wake up we can’t believe it’s all real. Unbelievable, really unbelievable. We really didn’t expect such a great vibe all around us.

What circumstances led you to decide to fire Accept up again?
Peter: That’s very simple. If you remember, in 2005 we played a few shows with Udo (Udo Dirkschneider, vocals, ed. note). We played a few festival gigs. Even back then we proposed carrying on, but Udo turned the offer down, saying: “No! I’ve got my own band!” We said: “Fine!” Wolf (Wolf Hoffmann, guitar, ed. note) and I both live in the US. Wolf is based in Nashville, I’m in Philadelphia. Wolf became a respected photographer, and I compose music for film. So we were both taken care of and didn’t need a band to make a living. When Udo said “No!”, we said: “OK, let’s close the book on Accept for good”. We went back to our normal, settled everyday lives. Then one day it happened that Wolf came to do a photo shoot near where I live. So I invited him over. We came up with the idea of jamming together again for a bit. I know a guy who has a studio, and a drummer who’d step in. Then we figured that without a singer the whole thing was pointless, it would feel boring. And then some other guy suggested he knew someone who lives just 20 minutes from the studio, sings like Udo and knows the songs. So we called him. That was Mark. When I called him he had a cold. But when I introduced myself as Peter Baltes from Accept, he croaked back without hesitation: “I’m coming right over!” First he demanded autographs, ha, ha, ha…. When Mark came we tried out the songs Starlight and Flash Rockin’ Man. Then I said: “Stop!” Wolf and I looked at each other and told the others to wait five minutes so we could talk in peace. I called Gaby (Gaby Hauke, now Gaby Hoffmann, Accept’s manager ed. note) in Nashville. I told her what was going on, that the whole thing had huge potential and could be even better than before. She said: “OK. I’m with you!” We invited Mark, who didn’t hesitate at all, he was over the moon. We talked to our families. My son is off to college, so I have a bit more time now, ha, ha,… Then we agreed to start writing songs and see where it would take us. Before long, miracles started to happen. Andy Sneap called us. He’d heard we were writing songs, and he’s been our biggest fan forever. He’d just finished producing the latest Megadeth album. He found us. He called us out of the blue. We didn’t even know who Andy Sneap was. He came to Nashville himself. We sat in a room, just like we’re sitting now, and listened to demo recordings. Wolf told me: “I’m going to stay here with you for a while!” “What do you mean, stay for a while?”, I replied. Wolf says: “Yeah. So we can listen to the old records together, “Restless And Wild”, “Breaker”, “Balls To The Wall”, “Metal Heart”. Andy stayed with us too. That’s how Wolf and I rediscovered ourselves. That we’re Accept. We went back to our roots. Then we compared notes on our first riff for a new song. That was the song Pandemic. We kept writing new songs, then Andy came back and we started recording “Blood Of The Nations” (read the RockLine review HERE, ed. note). So that’s the story of the new Accept beginning.

Was Mark Tornillo also involved in writing the material, or did you and Wolf write the music for the new album yourselves?
Peter: No. Wolf and I wrote the music for the new album ourselves. Mark came to my place later, he lives an hour and a half’s drive from me. So Mark tested how things fit him, and he was thrilled with the riffs. Every so often Wolf would of course check in from Nashville, sending samples as mp3 files, new riffs. All three of us weighed things up until we reached the right agreements on what to pick and how to use it in the songs. We had Andy on the line the whole time too, via Skype, ha, ha, ha…. That’s how things work these days.

How did you take the main differences that came up over the 15 years since your previous album “Predator”? I’m thinking of the differences in the approach to recording an album in the studio, especially in terms of how recording technology itself has developed.
Peter: Yes. Everything’s completely different now than in the mid-nineties. But I’m used to it and I know exactly how things work. I record at home every day. Wolf is also very up to speed with all the newfangled stuff. The advantage of today’s approach is speed. You can create a whole lot in a short time. So you can prepare lots of different samples, different guitar phrases, and then bounce them off the team and ask: “What do you think of this? And this? And this?…” In the old days, when everything went through recording tape, you didn’t have many options. You weren’t allowed to make a mistake. There wasn’t tape to burn. Now you simply delete the file and make a new one. Very simple and efficient. Even during the mixing phase, while Andy was mixing the songs, I was able to record a few extra bass lines.

How do you take all these reactions of enthusiasm from the crowd today, after a pause of several years, are there any differences? How does it hit you when you’re on stage with your bandmates, digging into your bass?
Peter: I know exactly what you mean. We’re a lot wiser and more experienced today. When we go on stage, we have a lot more fun than in the old days. When you’re young you charge onto the stage and bash your head in, but today, when we’re up there, we pay a lot more attention to eye contact with the audience. We watch people’s reactions. We watch how much they’re enjoying our performance, our songs. Say, you point at somebody in the crowd from the stage and then he goes even wilder, and so do you. The energy is incredible! We’ve never had so much fun on stage as we’re having right now. And I think people notice and feel that, and when they see that the band is really enjoying themselves and having a good time up there, they start getting more involved too. With Accept, things click into place in an instant and the bond between the crowd and the band fuses right away. We become one at the shows. When the set is over, we’re completely wiped out. But that doesn’t mean we hide in our Nightliner (tour bus, ed. note) straight away, we stay outside, shake hands with fans, chat. And every single night the crowd sends us off after the show with comments from individuals: “That was the best show I’ve ever seen!” We get comments like that every night. It gives me wings and I feel like a sixteen-year-old. So there’s something in the air that we’re doing totally right. I don’t know exactly what. We just play our music and enjoy it to the fullest while we’re at it. We don’t worry about whether we’ll make any money. We’re really doing something we love doing when we’re on stage. A lot of the time bands go on tour whose members don’t get along with each other, but they play shows anyway. And you can see and feel, watching them perform, that they don’t like each other when they’re on stage. What does that mean for the fan?

That kind of approach isn’t spontaneous, it isn’t honest, it’s fake…
Peter: It’s definitely off the mark. When you’re at a show as a fan of your favorite band, it’s not just about seeing them play on stage. It matters more than that. At that moment you want to see them in a good light, enjoying themselves and having fun up there. If you see your favorite band standing still on stage, it kind of ruins the nice, positive feelings you have for them. Even the great memories of the past. It’s really not stimulating. We just approach the crowd as we are. No pretending. Mark is a great vocalist. Everything clicks beautifully, and you’ll definitely see that for yourself today, when we play here in Munich.

The new album sounds great. It has an incredibly live sound. Did Andy himself suggest that kind of production, or did you reach an agreement together on how the album would sound?
Peter: We sat down together and asked ourselves: “How do we make an album that feels like it was made in 1984, but sounds like it was recorded in 2009?” Andy proved to be the ideal collaborator. He did it all himself. We just recorded the stuff, plugged into the amps, played the songs. At the end, at the key moments, Andy was the one who did the lion’s share of shaping the sound. All by himself. Andy didn’t overcomplicate things. There aren’t many extra effects, nothing like that. The guitar sound is very raw and preserved as much as possible that way. Just transferred from the amps onto the recording. Andy himself said he only wanted the effect of the playing, no extra gimmicks and no additional studio crutches that would “prettify” things even more.

It’s surprising, because Andy Sneap is known as a producer of extreme metal bands.
Peter: Yeah, really. For him, Accept were the first real heavy metal band, a band that isn’t thrash metal. It was something completely new for him and a learning experience. But as a team we grew really close in the studio, the bonds got tighter, we became really good friends and that had an additional positive effect on everyone. Tonight he’ll join us on stage (later at the show, Mark Tornillo only greeted him, and Andy didn’t come on stage), for the song Balls To The Wall. It makes a big difference when you have a producer in the studio who’s a real fan of the band. I remember situations in the studio. Wolf would be playing a solo, say, and Andy would be recording Wolf’s soloing and practically shaking with excitement next to him. He’s simply a huge fan of ours. Producers today usually just wander from band to band, the next day they’ve already forgotten who they made an album with, and they couldn’t care less about some band. But if the producer cares, then the results are completely different too. And of course the same goes for the band when it performs the material live. If they’re enjoying it, the crowd will enjoy everything too.

After all these positive vibes, it’s by no means far-fetched to assume that Accept will extend this reunion and record another new album pretty soon.
Peter: Definitely! The idea is that we stay on tour until the end of July. Then we break the tour off. So far we’ve had a lot of offers, but we had to turn them down. Because we simply want to record a new album. We really want that! Andy remains available, so we’ll use August, September and October to work on the new album. I hope that by February or March 2012 we’ll have everything ready for the new Accept album. And then of course a new tour will follow. Right now we’re in a very good position. We won’t have to wait long. Everybody’s wondering whether we can pull off another album like “Blood Of The Nations”. If we manage to repeat that, we’ll soon grow into an even bigger band. A really big band.

So you’re probably busily jotting down new material during this current tour…
Peter: Yes. We’re working on it. We’re already wrestling with song titles, collecting ideas for the cover art and so on.

How happy are you with your new label Nuclear Blast Records?
Peter: They’re fantastic. We chose Nuclear Blast Records because it’s a label founded by music lovers, fans. They grew up with us. With our music. Lots of people on the Nuclear Blast team grew up on the sounds of our music, they were our fans before they even founded the label. So we have the assurance that those people at the label will do everything for us, to help us. So it’s not just a label on paper. We’re Accept, we’re their band.

How did the shooting of the video for the song Teutonic Terror come about?
Peter: Dave Blass directed our new video for Teutonic Terror. Dave is based in Los Angeles, where he shoots big movies. And he’s also a huge Accept fan. He called us and said: “Please come to Los Angeles! I’d like to shoot this video. I’ll take care of everything you need!” And he really did. It turned into a big, punchy video where you watch Wolf play a solo on a lead guitar on top of a tank. Nothing puts me in a better mood than that shot, ha, ha, ha,… and also the shot of the two burning crossed guitars, in the style of the “Restless And Wild” album cover, right near the end of the video. That’s his addition, his own idea, because he’s such a big fan of ours.

We’re slowly nearing the end of this extremely interesting chat. To finish, I’d like to ask you a pretty general but personal question. What kind of music and what else inspired you in your youth to decide to play bass and pursue a music career?
Peter: I remember it very well. It was Roger Glover at the start of Smoke On The Water. That moment when the bass kicks into the song. That bass was distorted. It grabbed my attention. It left a big impression on me. That’s when I decided I’d buy a Rickenbacker bass. It was my first bass and it’s still the same as it was. I still use it.

And one last question. Are you planning to release a live album or DVD, maybe you’re recording the shows on the current tour?
Peter: Yes. We record our shows every night. Sound and film. Both. But I’d like to stress again that we want to be relevant. What we release, I want it to be really high quality. We really don’t want to rush anything. We’d like to thoroughly sum up everything this tour is about. We’d like a good picture, a good summary of the crowd’s reactions to our playing, a summary of that stage magic, and we’ll also include extra interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. When all of that is properly put together, we’ll really release a live DVD. No hurry there, we’re in no rush at all. We’ll take our time. Quality matters more than getting the DVD out as soon as possible.

That’s it. Peter, sincere thanks for your time and commitment, I wish you lots of success at tonight’s show in Munich, see you again later in front of the stage…
Peter: Thank you both too, and I hope you’ll enjoy our show tonight.

You can read how the Accept show in Munich went later that night, on 10.02.2011, HERE.

You can also check out the first RockLine report from the European leg of the “Blood Of The NAtions” tour, when Accept played in Vienna on 01.02.2011.

interview conducted, translated and edited by: Aleš Podbrežnik

photos: Urban Bolta

This interview with Accept was made in collaboration between RockLine and Rock Hard Slovenija.