The subject of this little Saturday round-up of new videos is… happiness…
ACCEPT
Happiness… happiness is being Accept and performing “Symphony No. 40″ before a bazillion people at Wacken Open Air with your own backing orchestra and conductor, stadium-sized video screens, abundant pyrotechnics, a couple dozen cameras filming the event, and a damned good editor splicing all the footage together. It doesn’t hurt that your lead guitarist (Wolf Hoffmann) looks like Bruce Willis. Continue reading »
Here’s Part 2 of today’s effort to catch up on news and new music I think are worth your attention. I had planned a third part, but that will have to wait until tomorrow (fucking day job).
ACCEPT
I’ve made no bones about my lukewarm reaction to much of what passes for “traditional” thrash — perhaps primarily because of the genre’s vocal style. But the new song (“Final Journey”) that NPR premiered today from Accept’s 14th album Blind Rage has knocked my socks off, not least because it includes a guitar melody lifted from Edvard Grieg’s “Morning Mood” as an unexpected accent near the song’s end.
But that’s only part of the attraction. The riffs and the solo are absolutely galvanizing, the melody is heart-pumping, and I actually like the vocals by Mark Tornillo as well. Check out the new lyric video next. The album can be ordered here from Nuclear Blast. Continue reading »
(In this post, BadWolf reviews the new album by Germany’s Accept, which was released by Nuclear Blast in April.)
I’m not sure what you guys at large think of old-school heavy metal; not only do we only cover it occasionally here; Islander neglected to offer it as an option on his reader’s poll. Not that I blame him, the style has been on life support and morphine for the majority of my lifetime—although there’s been a recent groundswell of bands trying to bring it back in vogue, such as High Spirits, Christian Mistress, Witch Mountain, and to a lesser extent 3 Inches of Blood. I get the impression that it used to be people began liking traditional heavy metal and then segued into the extreme stuff we specialize in at NCS. Now, it seems the opposite: people start out on extreme metal and wind their way back—maybe—to bands like Accept.
This is a good time to start, because Accept’s new album, Stalingrad, is a super-fine slab of riffs and solos—one of the most consistent albums I’ve heard all year. I spent the 4th of July driving around parked streets for what seemed like hours while fireworks exploded overhead. In the 100+ degree heat, I rolled my windows down and played Stalingrad as loud as my speakers could muster. One could call this ‘extreme’ traditional metal—fitting, from the band who invented speed metal in 1982 on the song “Fast as a Shark”—though Stalingrad sounds less like old Accept and more like a spiritual companion to Judas Priest’s Painkiller album. Stalingrad sounds like triumph, not torture; a high-powered sports car ramming down a highway; fireworks. Continue reading »
For a change, I actually remembered on the second day of the new month that that the preceding month had ended; usually takes longer than that. My creditors would be happy, except I think their bills need to age a while longer. But yes, February is history — and that means its time to post our usual monthly round-up of news about forthcoming albums. Today’s list is a little more comprehensive than the half-assed job I did at the end of January, which means it’s about three-quarters assed. One of these days it will be fully assed.
Here’s how this round-up usually works: In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, I collect news blurbs and press releases I’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like at NCS (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, I cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.
Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If I found out about a new forthcoming album earlier than the last 30 days, I probably wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier.
Having said all that, please feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us (me and your fellow readers) what I missed when I put this list together, because I’m abso-fucking-lutely certain that I missed all sorts of shit. So let us know about albums on the way that you’re stoked about, even if you don’t see them here! Continue reading »