Adrien Begrand at PopMatters.com recently caught up with ACCEPT guitarist Wolf Hoffmann. An excerpt is available below:

As we all know, a few established metal and hard rock bands have taken that huge gamble in the past and equaled – and even surpassed – their previous commercial success (BLACK SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE, AC/DC, and VAN HALEN, to name a few), but what many metal fans remember the most are the failures. IRON MAIDEN replaced Bruce Dickinson with Blaze Bayley, and their global success plummeted. JUDAS PRIEST hired Tim “Ripper” Owens after Rob Halford left, and most people stopped caring. Since 2007 ANTHRAX has replaced Joey Belladonna with unknown singer Dan Nelson, fired him, re-hired former frontman John Bush, and replaced him with Belladonna again, reducing a once great band to a laughingstock.

Then there’s Accept. By the mid-‘80s the German band was a top tier metal act thanks to such classic albums as 1981’s Breaker, 1982’s groundbreaking Restless and Wild, and the subsequent commercial smashes Balls to the Wall and Metal Heart. They were the quintessential Teutonic metal band, delivering sharp, clean, clinically precise riffs offset by the distinct snarl of army fatigues-clad Udo Dirkschneider.

By 1986’s disappointing Russian Routlette, however, the chemistry in the band was eroding, and after a hiatus during which Dirkschneider enjoyed modest success with his solo project U.D.O. (sporting an album that was ironically written for him by his Accept bandmates), the rest of the band decided to continue moving forward with a new singer, a flamboyant American screamer named David Reece. The end result was a complete flop. Eat the Heat (1988) was an attempt at reinvention that missed the mark completely, while Reece’s live interpretations of past Accept classics just didn’t go over well at all with longtime fans.

“We were looking for a new sound and a new direction,” admits guitarist Wolf Hoffman, calling from his home near Nashville, reminiscing about his band’s disastrous turn 22 years ago. “We had changed lead singers, there was other people involved, the producer, we were all together fishing for something where to take Accept next. It was a big experiment that failed miserably. One of the reasons is of course was we never really got the right chemistry in the band with David Reece. Hard to handle. I wouldn’t really say there’s any big lesson to be learned from it, other than we now know exactly what Accept stands for and what our core audience wants, so there’s really no need to change it.”

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As previously reported, Accept are co-headlining with KING'S X in the US. Confirmed tour dates are:

September

26 - Vintage Vinyl - Fords, NJ (in-store signing session)
27 - B. B. King's - New York, NY
29 - Showcase Live - Foxboro, MA

October

1 - The Silo - Reading, PA
2 - The Emerald Theatre - Mt. Clemens, MI
8 - The Agora Ballroom - Cleveland, OH
9 - The Arcada Theatre - St. Charles, IL
12 - House Of Blues - Dallas, TX
13 - House Of Blues - Houston TX

Additional dates for October and November will be announced soon.

Blood Of The Nations was recorded at Backstage Studio in England with famed producer Andy Sneap and will be released in North America on September 14th. Exclusive pre-sale bundles can be purchased at the Nuclear Blast Web Store.

Accept’s 2010 line-up includes Wolf Hoffmann on guitar, Peter Baltes on bass, Stefan Schwarzmann on drums, Herman Frank on guitar and Mark Tornillo on vocals.

Below you can view footage of Wolf Hoffman and Mark Tornillo on VH1’s That Metal Show, the video for Teutonic Terror – directed and produced by Dave Blass for Grid 41, and the 2-minute behind-the-scenes video.