MARTIN POPOFF - Metal Heart: Aiming High With ACCEPT

August 10, 2016, 7 years ago

(Power Chord Press)

Greg Pratt

Rating: 9.0

review heavy metal martin popoff accept

MARTIN POPOFF - Metal Heart: Aiming High With ACCEPT

This is a welcome sight to my eyes, having been a huge fan of the German band Accept for decades now, but probably knowing less about them than I do about any other band I love this much. So, happy to dive into this book, written by Martin Popoff (full disclosure: Popoff is a fellow BraveWords writer). And right off the bat I'm happy to see Popoff has fixed some of the bad habits I've seen slipping into his books in regards to verbatim quotes not being cleaned up or sitting without context. This one reads much cleaner and crisper, and that helps guide me through this album-by-album walk through this odd band's history. And, man, I'm hesitant to reveal too much of the truly neat stuff I've learned here, as it's really just a lot of quick tidbits, several “so THAT'S what that was all about” moments, lots of pieces of my mental metal puzzle being put together here. 

I love how this book gets into the Accept psyche, for example, talking about how manager Gaby Hoffman (you Accept fans know her as Deaffy) forbid the band to do any partying at all back in the '80s, and I mean any: apparently the band was finished if there was so much as one joint smoked (and, again: this was in the '80s!); Popoff wonders in the book if the resulting lack of socializing with other bands and industry folks created missed opportunities for the band, and now I'm lying awake at night wondering that same damn thing. Also, I love guitarist Wolf Hoffman's truly positive take on metal and how Accept wants to be a positive band and play metal with heart and soul... I mean, this just makes them that much more awesome to listen to. So, tons of insight here, although the photos throughout are mainly misses (the cover shot has Udo hiding behind a guitar), and there's the occasional useless quote (as someone guesses that maybe Metallica might have possibly jammed Accept songs at practice but it's only a guess and he wasn't there so who knows and argh I'm never getting that 10 seconds back), but this is one of Popoff's best, and a welcome look at an incredible band that I knew far too little about.



Featured Video

KELEVRA - "The Distance"

KELEVRA - "The Distance"

Latest Reviews