Until Udo departed in 1986 it’s fair to say Accept never recorded a poor album. ‘Balls To The Wall’ may have been their highest profile release, but ‘Restless And Wild’ was undoubtedly their best.
Written by: Dangerzone
ARTIST: Accept
ALBUM: Restless And Wild
LABEL: Heavy Metal
SERIAL: HMI LP 6
YEAR: 1982
CD REISSUE: Discogs Reissue List
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany
LINEUP: Udo Dirkschneider – vocals * Wolf Hoffmann – guitars * Peter Baltes – bass * Stefan Kaufmann – drums
TRACK LISTING: 01 Fast As A Shark * 02 Restless And Wild * 03 Ahead Of The Pack * 04 Shake Your Heads * 05 Neon Knights * 06 Get Ready * 07 Demons Night * 08 Flash Rockin Man * 09 Don’t Go Stealing My Soul Away * 10 Princess Of The Dawn
WEBLINKS: Site Link
Background
Until Udo departed in 1986 it’s fair to say Accept never recorded a poor album. ‘Balls To The Wall’ may have been their highest profile release, but ‘Restless And Wild’ was undoubtedly their best.
Hearing this more than twenty years since it debuted, its staggering power has not diluted one ounce, in fact it floors Maiden’s ‘Number Of The Beast’, perhaps the highest profile metal recording of that year.
It was the culmination of some excellent earlier albums, particularly 1981’s ‘Breaker’, advanced for the era, without the crudeness of many acts. Furthermore it showed there was more to German metal than The Scorpions, Accept able to compete with any English or American act.
The Songs
‘Fast As A Shark’ is the sort of track Iron Maiden might have recorded had they kept Dianno, but with Dickinson they became less heavy, instead Accept took it to another level, with a slice of thrash before it even properly existed. There’s no real way to describe how savage this was and still is, maniacal you might say.
The album benefits from this strong opening even further with the key anthems of the title track and ‘Ahead Of The Pack’, street level metal that Accept excelled at, the peoples metal band. Accept could have sued Maiden and Saxon for copping the opening riff to ‘Flash Rockin’ Man’, just take a listen to ‘Two Minutes To Midnight’ or ‘Power And The Glory’.
Udo’s at his best here, the man giving his all in a high pitched vocal display, an easy compliment to Hoffmann and Kaufmann’s wall of noise, witness the tangent around the two and a half minute juncture. ‘Neon Nights’ isn’t a description of Udo grinding with Klaus Meine at a Hamburg leather nightclub unfortunately, but a near ballad with a burst of speed near the end, good atmospheric metal.
In the glorious tradition of harebrained Euro metal is ‘Shake Your Head’, the sort of fare metal as a whole was shaped on, heavy yet melodic. Epic closer ‘Princess Of The Dawn’ is a fine journey, Hoffmann unleashing some beefy power chords, before an almost German folk music finale. A riposte perhaps to the albums opening gimmick of the folk album being obliterated by ‘Fast As A Shark’?
In Summary
Quite an achievement, then and now, ‘Restless And Wild’ one of 1982’s best, quite a feat in an era when classic metal was a common occurrence. Motorhead and Venom couldn’t touch this.
It was to that year what Krokus‘ ‘Headhunter’ or Maidens ‘Piece Of Mind’ were a year later, an album where everything clicked. ‘Balls To The Wall’ was a worthy followup, but lacking the aggression as a whole of ‘Restless And Wild’, something which only increased with later efforts.
Accept on Video
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