INTERVIEW BY MARKO SYRJ?L?
Pictures by Marko Syrj?l? and www.acceptarchive.com. Transcription by Blake Wolfe
There’s no doubt that Accept is a legend and one of the major infuences on the development of many bands in today’s metal scene. Accept was originally formed in the early seventies by vocalist Udo Dirkscheinder and some years later the stable lineup was completed with bassist Peter Baltes and guitarist Wolf Hoffmann among other musicians who were soon replaced with guitarist Jorg Fisher and drummer Stefan Kaufmann. This classic lineup recorded such metal classics as “Breaker”, “Restless And Wild”, “Metal Heart” and “Russian Roulette” before they split up with Udo and Jorg in 1988. In 1989 Accept did another album, “Eat The Heat”, with U.S singer David Reece, but after some unsuccessfull touring and then a split with Stefan Kaufmann the band soon disbanded and nothing was heard of Accept for the next few years.
The praised reunion album “Objection Overruled” came out in 1992 and Accept was back in action with classic lineup of Baltes, Kaufmann, Dirkscneider and Hoffmann but without Fisher this time. The new album did relatively well in Europe and Japan and over the next few years Accept continued touring and released two more albums “Death Row” and “Predator” before they disbanded again in 1997. Udo then continued working with his solo band U.D.O. and Stefan Kaufmann joined him. Peter Baltes then actually gave up playing and so did Wolf Hoffmann excluding one classical solo album which he did in 2000.
But now it’s year 2005 and Accept are back once again. During their visit to Scandinavia I sat down with Hoffmann and we talked about reasons behind this “third coming”, what happened in the past and what might happen in the future?
Read and learn!
