I hear a rock’n’roll guitar,
screamin’ wild on the radio
Well, I know what I like,
know and it’s right
Gotta take me through the night
There is a term in German, dampf schnell, which literally translates as ‘steamfast’ in English, but that’s only half the job. Linguistic historians say it arose when the rise of the railways transformed, mechanised and essentially sped-up the whole of society. Today it tends to be a bit of an esoteric term for excessive and reckless speed, usually mechanical in nature. I think it fits Best of Accept perfectly.
Dating from 1983 Best of culls 10 tracks from 4 LPs, strangely omitting 1983’s proto thrash metal ‘Fast as a Shark’ but still includes plenty of dampf schnell. The only band that come before AC/DC in my collection* I had Accept pegged as screechy German metallers of limited interest only for years and never explored them properly. As a teenager I was also scared off by the rather homoerotic cover of their Balls to the Wall album** which as a far more secure 45 year-old, amuses me hugely. I have been really taken by this LP over the last few years though.
A lot of that is down to just how much dampf schnell the fantastic opening track ‘Burning’ packs into its’ 5:15. It just explodes into action along with some totally fake audience noise and the reason I like it so much, apart from a chorus that is repeated roughly 8000 times^ is the fact that for all its’ absolute good-time ferocity it is built squarely on a hard blues rock chassis. Dare I say it, ‘Burning’ gives anything AC/DC did in 1981 a real kick in the (short) trousers. The riffing is brilliantly simple and lightning fast, the rhythm section make it swing and Udo Dirkschneider, a man whose middle names should surely be dampf schnell, sings it brilliantly, selling it totally. I genuinely can’t think of more than 2 or 3 better hard rock tracks.
As is only human, the quality on Best of is a touch more variable. ‘Restless and Wild’ for all its’ widescreen riffage, sounds strangely like Udo sang it whilst his voice was breaking as a teenager, he sounds muffled and too low at times and then unpleasantly shrill at others, seemingly at random – a bit like Rob Halford with the vertical hold on the blink. The guitar solo by Wolf Hoffman is undeniably great though. Whilst I’m here I’ll also put the boot into the unfinished sounding ‘Lady Lou’ as well.
It has to be said that rarely has any artist so successfully articulated the very essence of what it is to be a human, with all the fallibility, vulnerability and insight that necessitates, as Accept do on ‘Son of a Bitch’; like a less indulgent version of ‘Imagine’:
Son of a bitch, kiss my ass
Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, you asshole, son of a bitch
Cock suckin’ motherfucker I was right – take this
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh
There is nothing else to add here that would not detract from the poetry of these lyrics.
The track ‘Breaker’^* is possibly my second fave cut here, it is another fast track that sounds an awful lot like Rainbow’s ‘A Light in the Black’ played on 45RPM by mistake, or like Judas Priest would the year after this came out. Plenty more, you guessed it, dampf schnell.
The three tracks that sequenced next from 1980’s I’m a Rebel are interesting, Accept hit upon a blue-collar hard rock sound that brings to mind the mighty Rose Tattoo; hard-drinking, steel toecapped working man’s rock. ‘I’m a Rebel’ was written by the ‘other’ Young Brother, Alex Young – recorded by AC/DC as a demo but never released, I can easily imagine it being played to soundtrack the fist fights at a particularly fearsome watering hole.
To round off the Best of we get a full-on ballad, ‘No Time to Lose’ which I was going to wrinkle my, exquisitely formed, nose up at for being a bit clichéd – except it came out in 1980, so it probably set a few of those clichés in motion. It’s good, if you like that sort of thing. ‘Princess of the Dawn’ is something else entirely, a mid-paced 6-minute hoarsely sung full-on broads and broadswords*^ epic. I think it’s great, indicative of the sort of unself-conscious daftness that metal bands used to strive for all the time, before everything in the world got too arch and knowing. It has skyscraping guitar solos, a mandolin hoe-down and lyrics that don’t make too much sense written down. All great fun, apart from a totally rubbish sudden ending, that the band now regret.
So there you have it, Accept before their best two albums, in absolutely no expense spent packaging, no sleevenotes, no photographs of the band^^. Despite the limitations here some moments of real hard rocking quality absolutely shine through, plenty enough dampf schnell to go around.
798 Down.
PS: Altogether now:
In the war of the dragons
Young blood ran its course
They fell to his blade
The knight on the Iron Horse
PPS: I invented the whole ‘dampf schnell’ thing. Although please feel free to use it as you will and make it a real thing.
*no Aaron and the Aardvarks LPs in my collection. Which is a bit of the shame as Aaron and the Aardvarks’ If You Want Aardvarks, You’ve Got it and The Aardvarks they are a-Changin’ are just classics.
**’London Leatherboys’ anyone? you wouldn’t catch a more macho crew like, say, Judas Priest getting up to that sort of high jinks, no sirree!
^I tend to love songs which do that, maybe I just give in easily.
^*title track of the next LP I will buy.
*^Broads and Broadswords is hereby totally, like, patented and shit as the title of a role-playing game I will bring out one day.
^^I expected a bit better from the legendary Brain Records label.
Woah, wait… Accept recorded I’m a Rebel??? Must investigate. PS: Nice baguette.
I bet you say that to all the guys!
Only to the ones that will listen.
Ah nice surprise! I am unfamiliar with most early Accept, my entry point being the 80s. I’ve been looking for a best-of…
I’ll sell you mine for £794.44.
Throw in some minifigs.
A band I should have listened more to back in the day but am growing to appreciate more in my Autumn years. When I played “Balls to the Wall,” I used to put the LP cover face down so I wouldn’t have to look at it.
Too right. Should’ve shaved his leg. Horrid.
Definitely!!
Mr Wax should have paid the Dingly-Dangly brothers a quick visit too in my opinion – what was he thinking?
HaHa – I only really know the title track, which is tremendous.
Not a band I’ve been all that drawn to. I have Blind Rage here and I think that’s plenty for me. If the label can’t be bothered putting out a nicely packaged Best Of that tells you all you need to know about this stuff (well, not really, but y’know… ?)
I guess that wee guy with the baguette sums up my thoughts on this one.
He speaks for us all. I’m thinking of having him run for US president in 2020.
Dammit! Now I’m going to have If You Want Aardvarks, You Got Em stuck in my head.
I think we can all remember where we were when we first heard that track. That one and Smells Like Teen Aardvarks.
Being just that bit older, my first encounter was the legendary Ziggy Aadvark and the Anteaters from Mars. Blew my snout.
Or if you want to get all 60s about it, I was a fan of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Aardvark Band.
I was going to list that but thought you might not remember it.
Interesting factoid: Downunder it was titled Sgt Aadvark’s Lonely Ant’s Club Band. Fetches big money on Discogs, I believe.
That was utterly dampf schnell Bruce!
Accept is filed before AC/DC? This was too distracting. I’ll have to go back and finish reading.
You’re not a librarian are you?!
Haha, nope 😉
Just a little weird, probably….
Probably?
Haha 🙂 I’m sensing a tone….
I like the look of shock, fear and disgust in the lions face.
If he could talk he would say
“Get him off….no wait, I mean remove him from above my head.”
Mwah-ha-ha!
Lego Man with the wiener is the greatest pic I have ever seen!
Having said that the album not having Fast As A Shark is indeed puzzling??!
My intro to Accept was the album that scared you by that cover. Inside though what an ass cracker of an album….
Martin Popoff wrote an excellent book on them that I reviewed a ways back…
Good job here fella!
Cheers Deke! I aim to please, if you want weiners, you’ve got them!
If You Want Blood….You Got It!
So should I assume your vast Abba collection is filed under AW for Awesome or P for pants?
Also, is that Lego man with the striped shirt and mustache from Paris or Nantucket?
He may have come in from Nantucket via sleigh.
Abba? Filed under ‘N’ for No Fucking Chance (I’m just being hip, that was their original name before they went all wussy and commercial).
I saw an article in a Swedish magazine about the band and their former name, the transitions the band made and the super fans that followed them worldwide.
It was in Swedish so the only words I understood were Abba, 1537 and Lego.
Perhaps you could fill in the blanks a bit.
I’d love to but when I left the group I had to sign a non disclosure agreement. Sorry.
When you stated “Kallax and Expedit record shelves are the only good thing Ikea has ever had”, that was one thing, but when you said “those Italian spicy meatballs are the best”, the band had no choice but to expel you.
I bet they missed your funky glockenspiel beat though.
PS. I’m about to spin a favourite album from recent years, “Electronique Noire” by Elvind Aarset.
I kid you not.
https://vinylconnect.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/img_5796.jpg
I bet it’s the gem in your ‘E’ section!
I will not dignify such nonsense with a response.
Of course, sorry. I forgot, filed under ‘N’ for Noire, Electronique.
Presumably this highly entertaining tour-de-dampf schnell marks the beginning of you collecting the famous Brain label? I smell a krautrock conversion of major proportions.
Right now I’m off to Kickstarter to search out Broads and Broadswords. I’m in!
Quite possibly, I think my copies of Neu! and Can bits and pieces are on different reissue labels.
Possibly because I read your comment right before I went to sleep, you made a cameo appearance in my dreams last night. You were driving a blue van with the cover of Split Enz ‘True Colours’ painted on the back doors. I thought ‘There’s Bruce’ and that was that! True story.
Outstanding design for van painting (the vehicle, not the curmudgeonly singer). Hope I didn’t run you over.
Nope, I tried to catch you up but failed. There’s a message in there somewhere.