UDO DIRKSCHNEIDER And His Son SVEN Weigh In On State Of Heavy Metal In 2026: Record Companies Are 'Doing A Lot Of Things Wrong'

In a new interview with Rock Kommander, former ACCEPT frontman Udo Dirkschneider and his son Sven Dirkschneider, who plays drums for both of Udo's bands, U.D.O. and DIRKSCHNEIDER, were asked what the "biggest difference" is in terms of the way music is made today compared to how it was four decades ago. Sven, who is 32, said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The biggest difference was that [Udo and the other guys in ACCEPT] went in completely freestyle. They didn't know what they were doing. They were just writing songs. There may[be] was a direction that you wanted to aim for, but you went into a rehearsal room, somebody came up with a riff, and then you started doing a song. Today, everything is so pre-shaped already. If you wanna do this genre, you have to do that, and there are certain rules that you shouldn't do that. And, like, do that or this and blah, and there's so many sub-genres of this main genre that sometimes it's very hard to follow. Like, now we even have, what? We have 'dwarf metal' or — I don't know. It's crazy to me."

Sven continued: "Of course, it's cool that new things get created, but sometimes it's a bit weird, I would say. Why don't we just call it heavy metal? We can say death metal. We can say thrash metal. All of this is understandable. But we're coming up with 'dwarf metal'? Like, okay, come on. I don't get it. Sorry. But that's the biggest thing that changed from back in the days to today. You have to have a concept. All these concept bands where people can interact and get a face mask or paint themselves and then go to shows and really connect with the band, that changed. Something like that wasn't there back in the days. Maybe people want some clothes that they see on a certain artist, but definitely not something that we have today with POWERWOLF and SABATON. And what else? GHOST as well. And all of these bands are concept bands. They follow the concept. And for me, it's very interesting to see, for example, with SABATON, that they followed this history path, writing about certain historic events, and now they had to find something that they can dive into. And they are the masters in that, I would say, because I believe that [SABATON bassist and manager] Pär [Sundström] had that vision from day one. He knew already where to go with it in 10 years, and that's something you have to be very smart and clever to do so. And I think nothing like that was there back in the days when you started writing music."

As for what newer metal bands can do to stand apart from the rest of the acts in today's scene, Udo said: "I think the most important thing, if you are a band and make music and you wanna survive in this business, I think the most important thing is that you write songs. I can say we was writing a lot of songs with ACCEPT, also with U.D.O. now, they are already classics. And that's just like 'Smoke On The Water' [by DEEP PURPLE]. You can play this song maybe also in 30 years or whatever. So like [ACCEPT's] 'Balls To The Wall', it's also a song you can play it, it doesn't matter where you play this song. The people really go into that song, and also young people. This is sometimes like you'll be on stage, it's, like, 'What?' The guys may be 16 or 17 years old, and they sing the whole song, you know? That means you wrote songs, and that, I think, is a very, very important thing to make music. Not only like make songs like 12 minutes long, then have so many changes in the songs, whatever. Nobody can follow this. I mean, really songs where people can sing along. I think it's not so easy, now in our days, to do something like this. But now I think it's more important for newer bands, what we talking about SABATON or POWERWOLF, you need something to step out of everything and of all these bands. I mean, we have so many bands. That is also the difference between the '80s and now. In the '80s, there was not that many bands. There was SCORPIONS, ACCEPT and MÖTLEY CRÜE, IRON MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST, and all that stuff, MOTÖRHEAD. But there was not that many bands around. But now, in my opinion... How you can say this? Record companies are making their own problems to sign too much bands. And, yeah. I mean, we can talk about just like the business in the record companies. I think they're doing a lot of things wrong."

U.D.O.'s 20th studio album, "Voodoo Ranger", will arrive on January 8, 2027 via Reigning Phoenix Music.

Written by Udo Dirkschneider, drummer Sven Dirkschneider, bassist Peter Baltes and guitarist Fabian "Dee" Dammers, with additional contributions from new guitarist Alen Brentini, "Voodoo Ranger" brings four decades of heavy metal experience into an album that sounds unmistakably U.D.O. The album was produced and mixed by Martin "Mattes" Pfeiffer, mastered by Stefan Kaufmann, while its artwork was painted by acclaimed artist Eliran Kantor.

The band will celebrate four decades of U.D.O. live with the extensive "Triple Anniversary Tour 2027", taking the anniversary across Europe and bringing together material from throughout the band's history. At the same time, another major chapter in Dirkschneider's story will be told away from the stage: his official autobiography, created together with Dan Dreyer, will be published in the very same month as "Voodoo Ranger".

In April 2023, Baltes officially joined U.D.O. and DIRKSCHNEIDER. The former ACCEPT bassist had been playing bass for U.D.O. since September 2022, initially as a temporary replacement for U.D.O.'s then-bassist Tilen Hudrap who was hospitalized after the band's show in Munich, Germany.

DIRKSCHNEIDER is the name of Udo's band which performs ACCEPT material exclusively.

Although Udo announced 11 years ago that his initial DIRKSCHNEIDER tour would mark his final time performing ACCEPT songs, he has continued to play select shows under the DIRKSCHNEIDER banner for more than a decade.

DIRKSCHNEIDER recently reimagined ACCEPT's iconic album "Balls To The Wall" to celebrate the LP's 40th anniversary. The band, which also features Udo's son Sven Dirkschneider on drums and the guitar duo of Alen Brentini and Fabian "Dee" Dammers, celebrated the 40th anniversary of "Balls To The Wall", which was originally released in late 1983 and is the most commercially successful and best-known album by ACCEPT, by performing the LP in its entirety on recent tours of South America, North America and Europe.

Photo credit: Martin Hausler