Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Accept
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2012
Running time: 56:32
Rating: 4.5/5
This album is pure poison!!! A worn-out basic motif, yet for Accept’s manner you’d hardly find a handier one! The former and once-again current Volgograd. Stalingrad! And Accept! Those magnificent old-school steel welders who rose from the dead with the fantastic comeback album »Blood Of The Nations« (2010) – RockLine review HERE. We won’t poke our noses too long into what the band’s been up to over the past two years, suffice it to say that Accept had a great world tour devoted to promoting »Blood Of The Nations«, on which they also visited Slovenia last summer with a gig at the Metal Camp festival in Tolmin. For everyone who slept through the last two or three years, let me add that the new Accept singer is Mark Tornillo, who’s now filling Udo Dirkschneider’s boots on a second Accept album in a row. Even the visual side of »Stalingrad« is interesting. The motif of two burning, crossed Flyin’ V Gibson guitars that adorns the cover of »Stalingrad« isn’t one Accept are using for the first time in their discography. Remember the cover of »Restless And Wild« (1982)?
On the stages of the 2010 and 2011 tours, Accept showed exceptional playing and a hunger for performing, for playing, for making heavy metal. Like a toddler who’s finally found his favorite rattle again after a long search. The creative nucleus of the band, you could even say the fire of constant transformation, remains the Hoffamnn – Baltes – Frank triangle, which brings the bulk of the riffs to Accept’s music. It may read as superfluous, all this commenting on how the band’s last tour felt, but it’s a very important fact showing that Accept really came across, like few metal bands (I’m aiming at much younger generations too), as relentless and bloodthirsty as they plowed through stages around the world on the »Blood Of The Nations« tour! Verified. That’s proof of the exceptional creative energy that has built up around the band and has been driving it for a few years now like fresh blood! That makes it easy to create new music. And all of it points to one more important foundation of today’s Accept. Rock-solid comradeship and a lot of mutual friendship among the band members.
»Stalingrad« continues the road laid out by »Blood Of The Nations«. Let me say right away that it keeps the level of expression of its predecessor and holds on to all of »Blood Of The Nations«’ quality attributes! The first was expected, the second welcome! And the overall feeling, once you’ve fought your way through its running time, is that »Stalingrad« bites, slaughters and tears even more relentlessly, even more mercilessly, and in the sonic tally comes across as even more white-hot glowing than its predecessor. Welcome to the chilling steel foundry, then! Yes. In keeping with a title that conjures up total war, the devastation of World War II! It’s played in exactly that manner. So it’s instantly clear that Accept have hit their mark with it. Picture the rocket salvos of the Katyushas, the tank fire of German Tigers spewing over an encircled city, the sky going dark as endless swarms of Heinkels and Junkers swoop in, the smell of charred corpses being torn apart by starving wanderers, the acrid air eating away at their airways. There’s only one way out. Certain death… In a word, the album »Stalingrad« is total devastation.
Of course you have to understand that the phrase »total devastation« in this review is tied to the reach of the ossified school of Teutonic heavy metal, in other words the reach of Accept metal! They’re putting out the hardest album of their story. Behind the bulk of that stands the reach of today’s studio production standards and final sound finishing. With the one and only Andy Sneap at the helm as producer, a longtime big follower and admirer of Accept’s music, it’s all the clearer that the dose of destructiveness in today’s Accept is literally deadly. So »Stalingrad« could easily have been called »Blood Of The Nations« or vice versa. The difference is that in its destructive intensity »Stalingrad« is an even more crushing metal album than its predecessor. It’s also even darker than its predecessor. That fits with the desire to deliver total doom, dictated by the album’s title itself. A generous dose of destructiveness is deepened by one more fact. The song structure. This time it’s quite hard to find mid-tempo songs (slow ones aren’t allowed anyway). The first is Shadow Soldiers! The second is the closing The Galley. The first of the two is one of the album’s most successful compositions, thanks to a fantastic lead guitar phrase and the exceptional atmosphere the band creates here. The second mid-tempo song is an especially dark spot on the album, though in the outro the band adds a melancholic instrumental passage played in a half-acoustic manner, the only »soft« part of the album. Placed in exactly the right spot.
The rest of the album doesn’t save fuel for a second. The band’s recognizable trademarks are with us. Epic harmonic male chants in the choruses or in the transitions into choruses, craftily added touches of Russian melos (the song Stalingrad includes a motif from the former Russian anthem). If the song Stalingrad speaks of the famous World War II battle where the cards on the war’s playing field were radically reshuffled and the course of the war was turned around, the song Hellfire is dedicated to the bombing of Dresden, which the Americans, in their vengefulness just before the end of the war, leveled to the ground. Tornillo sounds even more committed on the new album, even more »Acceptish«, and this time only those of you who got stuck in the eighties and haven’t followed new developments in metal for a long time will miss Dirkschneider. Tornillo sounds even more dynamic and inventive in creating vocal melodies, even more convincing in performance and even more self-assured than on »Blood Of The Nations«. Here are the exceptional new riiffs from the Hofmann/Frank duo, the steely tearing and grinding in the sound of Baltes’ clearly distinct bass guitar, while the reliable Stefan Schwarzmann once again blasphemously shells the room with the unbridled rolling of his double bass drum pedals. A poke in the eye!
»Stalingrad«, as already mentioned, keeps up the level of »Blood Of The Nations« and Accept aren’t squatting down with it. It’s a thoroughbred Accept album that doesn’t have a shred of pathos in potentially leaning on tried-and-tested lead phrases of the past, and doesn’t sound worn-out or self-repetitive for a second. It’s simply a new, classically cut manifesto of Accept’s might, which couldn’t be more authentic in its essence than it is. And that counts in art, and especially in heavy metal. The magic of metal is available only to the chosen. You know who you are! »Stalingrad« is an album for you! The very thought of it is beautiful. Of its authenticity of expression, its authentic one-of-a-kind uniqueness and timelessness, since its content can never grow old, let alone die! And Accept? May they stay with us like this for as long as possible! After what they showed between 2010 and 2012, there’s really no need to fear it could be any other way. The old guard of metal knows no rust, no chipped teeth, let alone warped copies. The tooth of time can’t gnaw at them. Maybe the occasional tooth of the glass, but that’s another topic, isn’t it? With the kind of fury that »Stalingrad« carries, there’s no fear we won’t be meeting Accept in a new war any time soon!
Lineup
Mark Tornillo – vocals
Wolf Hofmann – guitar
Hermann Frank – guitar
Peter Baltes – bass guitar
Stefan Schwarzmann -drums
Production
Andy Sneap
Track list
01. Hung, Drawn And Quartered
02. Stalingrad
03. Hellfire
04. Flash To Bang Time
05. Shadow Soldiers
06. Revolution
07. Against The World
08. Twist Of Fate
09. The Quick And The Dead
10. Never Forget*
11. The Galley
*… bonus track
DVD (included only in the limited edition):
“Live At Bang Your Head!!! Festival 2010”:
01. Princess Of The Dawn
02. Pandemic
03. No Shelter
“Live At Masters Of Rock Festival 2010”:
04. Teutonic Terror
05. The Abyss
music videos:
06. Teutonic Terror
07. Pandemic
