“Night To Remember”

Review By Martin Curtis
Arrangement By Alison Booth

Heavy metal giants ACCEPT recently performed at Wacken Open Air’s “Night To Remember” in front of 85,000+ fans. One of the crowd was long time English ACCEPT fan Martin Curtis, who kindly reviewed the show for us at Metal Shock Finland:

As a festival, Wacken is second to none. One of the reasons for going is because the organisers have an innate ability to make shows special, so that you feel privileged to have been there. In recent years, I have seen them do this with Doro and with Saxon, but this year’s Accept show was arguably the best yet.

Accept are a band that are on an absolute high at the moment – and I am old enough to remember the Udo years. Their song writing is first class, Mark Tornillo is a vocalist with a great sound and immense energy and Wolf Hoffmann is a legend who seems to be enjoying himself more than ever. It is true that you get that combination from any show, but throw in an orchestrated set and the pleasure of seeing Wolf playing stuff from his excellent classical albums and you get some thing to be relished, all made better by that very special Wacken crowd that were lapping up every minute.

Afterwards, there was talk that the classical set was too long, or that the orchestrated set lost a bit of excitement; I disagree but, anyway, who cares?

I could write a track by track, minute by minute analysis, but that is not my style. Anyway, that is not what I will remember. My lasting memory will be of seeing a unique set by a band that are on an absolute high and at one of the world’s great festivals.

Photos from the official ACCEPT YouTube footage.

Heavy metal pioneers ACCEPT just finished an extensive European tour – and they are immediately back in the game with a new studio album! The record entitled “The Rise Of Chaos”, will be unleashed on August 4th, 2017. The band’s 4th studio release through Nuclear Blast will continue the tradition of its three predecessors, “Blood Of The Nations”, “Stalingrad”, and “Blind Rage”, with grandeur and precision.

And if this wasn’t enough, ACCEPT will celebrate the album’s live premiere exclusively on August 3rd, on the day before its release, as a part of a special show at Wacken Open Air, Germany. The set will consist of three parts, which represent the band’s creative power:

Part 1 will bring fans a classic ACCEPT set, packed with new and old hits.
Part 2 will present another premiere: Wolf Hoffmann will be playing tracks from his solo album “Headbangers Symphony”, released in 2016, with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra for the very first time. On this record, Wolf has covered famous opuses by composers such as Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Mozart, in a metal guise.
And in Part 3, all elements can be seen and heard together: ACCEPT will make the holy Wacken ground shake by sharing the stage with the orchestra, supported by a complex multimedia show.

This unique concert experience will take place on this year’s “Night To Remember” which makes it even more special. The “Night To Remember” is a celebrated, long-lasting Wacken tradition; for one night of the festival a selection of established bands will do something unique and special with their performance.

Wolf Hoffmann stated: “It’s always impressive to see how bands take this evening seriously and how much love the artists and the organising team put into their work to get a varied result. It’s a great tradition which underlines and documents the top-notch level of the international rock community like nothing else. We also want to present something that ACCEPT has never done before, we hope we can give something really special to the fans.”

“ACCEPT have been and are still a very important part of Germany’s heavy metal scene. We’re really looking forward to having them with us once more. With this epic concept, the Thursday evening will be one to remember for sure,” stated Thomas Jensen, organiser of Wacken Open Air.