WOLF HOFFMANN: ACCEPT Will Never Embark On 'Fake' Farewell Tour

Martell of We Love Metal recently conducted an interview with guitarist Wolf Hoffmann of German/American metallers ACCEPT. Hoffmann discussed his second solo album, "Headbangers Symphony", and the possibility of ACCEPT adopting a more classical sound in the future.

Asked if ACCEPT has felt the pressure of having to deliver a certain type of sound every time the band puts out a new album, Wolf said: "I wouldn't call it pressure, but it's certainly… We are aware of it, yeah. Right now, we're actually in the process of writing new songs for our new album, so Peter [Baltes, bass] and I meet very often and we sit here and go through ideas that we have and we pick out the ones that we think are the ones that sound the most like ACCEPT, which is… That's what I think people expect from us, and we expect that ourselves, because we want it to sound like ACCEPT. The longer you do that, the harder it gets sometimes, because, obviously, you can't redo the same thing over and over again, and you can't stay… At the same time, you need to stay true to your course musically and stylistically, so you're walking a tightrope there. The more albums you make, the harder it gets."

Regarding whether ACCEPT will call its quits in the foreseeable future or if the band plans on continuing for years to come, Hoffmann said: "I haven't thought that far yet, to be honest. I mean, we had a long break. As a lot of people know, we had a long… over-ten-year hiatus, so we had plenty of time to recharge our batteries and to look left and right at what else there is in life, so we're actually still in the phase of being really excited just being back in the genre and the music business. We made three albums in five years with Mark Tornillo, the new singer, and things couldn't be better right now, so we'll keep charging full force ahead for the foreseeable future until somebody drops dead or something else happens. But we aren't there, so we don't know."

He added: "I can promise you this much: we won't do like a farewell thing, a fake one, anytime soon, like everybody else is doing. You won't see like 'the last tour, maybe, sort of, probably not' kind of thing."

"Headbangers Symphony", a collection of rock-guitar-driven interpretations of some of classical music's most loved compositions, will be released on July 1 via Nuclear Blast. Wolf took the main pieces, and then wrote riffs that fit them. Lastly, in the grand hard rock tradition, he layered a guitar solo over it. He shaped the sound into a quite adventurous elegance, but the key themes of the originals remained.