ACCEPT: Mixing 'Old-School Songwriting' With 'Modern, Tighter Production'

TJ Fowler of Skullbanger Media conducted an interview with guitarist Wolf Hoffmann and bassist Peter Baltes of German/American metallers ACCEPT before the band's September 27 concert in Tampere, Finland. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the songwriting process for ACCEPT's new album, "Blind Rage":

Wolf: "You can never really plan an album. You just write a bunch of good songs and pick the best ones and that sort of becomes the album. You can't really say, 'Oh, we're gonna steer it this way or that way a little bit. I mean, it just sort of happens. Whatever happens happens."

Peter: "I think we recorded about 20 tracks, and these are the best ones we picked out on there, so you really never know beforehand what you end up with; it's always a crapshoot in the end. We were very lucky on this one."

Wolf: We worked hard. We wrote for about eight or ten months for this album, so the good thing is, like Peter said, we had a lot of material to choose from in the end. And we must have written a gazillion half-finished songs, but in the end, we ended up with more than enough songs to choose from for the album, which was great. Also, what was good, before Andy [Sneap], the producer, ever came, and before we started recording, everything was pretty well demoed out, so it was just a matter of then recording it and getting the best performance. It wasn't like with the last album, [where] we were recording the first half while we were still finishing writing the last half, so that was stressful. So this time around, we said, 'We're gonna start recording when we're ready.'"

On the the evolution in ACCEPT's sound since the band reformed in 2009:

Wolf: "The first album [2010's 'Blood Of The Nations'] was a little bit of a struggle initially, because we didn't really know what should ACCEPT sound like in… what was it? 2010? And then, with the help of Andy Sneap, we pretty much found that direction. I think what's happening, why it works so well is because we've got that old-school songwriting, and Andy Sneap gives us that modern, tighter production with a punchier sound than we had in the past, so that makes it a little more contemporary. And every time that Peter and I get together and start writing riffs, it automatically sounds like ACCEPT already. Because we write a certain way, and we have a certain preference for things, so anytime we get together and come up with a song… Andy made sure, when we wrote that first album that we didn't steer too far off course, and ever since we know what works. And it's great."

"Blind Rage", sold around 6,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release.

The band's previous CD, 2012's "Stalingrad", opened with around 5,400 units to debut at position No. 81 on The Billboard 200 chart.

The group's 2010 album, "Blood Of The Nations", registered a first-week tally of 2,900 copies to land at No. 187.

"Blind Rage" was released on August 15 via Nuclear Blast. Like its two predecessors, 2010's "Blood Of The Nations" and 2012's "Stalingrad", the new effort was helmed by British producer Andy Sneap, who has previously worked with MEGADETH, EXODUS, TESTAMENT, ARCH ENEMY and KILLSWITCH ENGAGE. The cover artwork was created by Daniel Goldsworthy.

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