Metal Shrine recently conducted an interview with ACCEPT guitarist Wolf Hoffmann. Excerpts from the interview are below:

Metal Shrine: Writing music, like for this album, I saw an interview where you said you don't write on the road. I just thought with all the down time you have when you´re on tour… is there never a time when you sit down and strum on the guitar trying to come up with stuff?

Wolf Hoffmann: “No. For me, I need to get deep into it. I don't know. Maybe song writing is like a spiritual thing where you gotta immerse yourself into it? I need to know that I have an open calendar. Even when we´re in song writing and I know there´s an appointment at six, I hate to sit down at two o´clock and think that I only have four hours. What happens if I have the greatest idea of my life and I wanna finish it? I hate the thought of having something on my schedule that blocks it, you know. I need to have nothing else that day that I need to do. It´s weird. Another thing is that when you´re on the road you never have all your gear. I hate to do it on a little laptop with crappy guitar sound. I wanna have my shit and sit there with my stuff and get inspired.”

Metal Shrine: Are you involved in any other projects, solo stuff or otherwise?

Wolf Hoffmann: “Yeah! I made a record over 10 years ago called Classical and I´m working on a follow up album for that one. I always felt that all my rock and metal stuff ends up in Accept and I don´t really need a side project. I´m not a frustrated song writer that needs to vent his ideas, but what I love to do and have already done once, is an instrumental record. That´s really what I´d like to do. It´s a very unique challenge, it´s one thing to have song writing with vocals and lyrics. It´s actually a lot easier than instrumentals. For instrumentals you´ve got just your guitar. You don´t have the vocals to keep your attention and song writing is also very repetitive. You´ve got your first verse, chorus, second verse, chorus so you only need like two parts and you´re already three minutes into the song. Whereas in an instrumental, after 30 seconds it can be awfully boring if you don´t come up with something that is interesting so it´s a very unique challenge.”

Metal Shrine: True. I also heard that you´ve recorded stuff live. Is that for a possible live DVD?

Wolf Hoffmann: “It´s in the works, man! A lot of fans are asking for it and they feel that Accept is so strong now and they´ve seen us live. They think ‘They´re on fire! Where can I get proper recorded DVD from?’ We´ve already recorded some shows and it´s actually quite challenging. Everybody´s doing these live DVDs at festivals because that´s the easiest thing because the cameras are already there, but I´m not sure what we end up doing. I think it´s almost a discrepancy because at the live show you really have to focus on the audience at that moment and you´ve got to play the greatest hits and maybe two or three songs from the new one, where on a DVD I always wanna see more obscure songs that might not work so well at the concert while you´re there. I´m always thinking, ‘Wouldn´t it be better if we had a sort of a special occasion where we recorded some stuff that we don´t normally play live?’ I´m not sure. I haven´t debated that all the way through to the end, but I always think ‘If we just record a show, maybe that´s not enough? Maybe we should have a special event where we just set aside for filming and look at it that way.’”

Read the entire interview at this location.

Remaining dates on the band’s current tour are as follows:

November

11 - Palladium Riga - Riga, Latvia
13 - Sterio Plaza - Kiev, Ukraine