Well, what can I say about one of the first Heavy Metal albums I ever heard way back in the early nineties, the magic certainly hasn't faded one bit.
Accept has developed into one of my absolute favourite bands; their right in your face Metal attitude combined with countless brilliant songs packed with both melody and hardness is a trademark along with their brilliant chorus' and spectacular guitar work.
It seems to me that Russian Roulette is far from the most celebrated
Accept release, which I always found kind of odd seeing this as their most excellent work by far; I guess I just have a strange and untraditional musical taste :)
Russian Roulette is an album that is very concerned with war or should I say anti-war, the album tries to present it in a realistic way and very much succeeds in doing so. Other aspect is touched upon too like painful love in the brilliant ballad
It's Hard To Find A Way and more positive and ambitious vibes in
Aiming High.
This record features both Jörg Fisher and
Wolf Hoffmann on guitars, but unfortunately no details of whom plays what and I haven't been able to find any information on it either. My impression as a devoted
Accept fan is that
Wolf handles most of the lead stuff and Jörg mostly rhythm, anyway
Wolf has always been close to a synonym for
Accept's classical guitar style so I dedicate the fantastic lead guitar work on this one to him especially.
TV War starts things of like a steaming rocket, great double bass drumming combined with a solid rhythm guitar. A classical
Accept track with a huge chorus and lots of brilliant guitar passages.
Monsterman is another short, very melodic and direct song, this one with a more rocking style. Udo's raw voice is pure genius and
Wolf's solo is no less than world-class; he defiantly ranks among the top of all time guitarist, technicality and melody in perfect harmony.
The dark and atmospheric intro to
Russian Roulette gets brutally smashed by a hard and driving rhythm and this counts as one of many huge moments on this album. The level of bombastic capacity in the chorus is purely unique and I surrender to it every time.
The grooving bass is another treat and the totally surprising and extremely melodic shift that comes when Udo offers a new vocal path is no less than mind-blowing.
The emotional
It's Hard To Find A Way is a pure Metal classic and it contains one of the most melodic chorus' ever, I simply love this song!
The mix of acoustic and electric guitars is working brilliantly and the guitar solo is one of the best ever created, it drags you into its mesmerizing world of unbound magic.
Aiming High is a fast and hard pounding monster that contains untamed power and real Metal attitude, outstanding varied drums and a central epic chorus makes this even better.
Heaven Is Hell delivers an extremely hard rhythm section and presents Udo with some unbelievable vocal lines; if you want to scare somebody just play them the spoken mid-section part, I still believe that he was possessed to some degree when nailing this down, its so fucking evil!
The underlying church organ that lures in the background creates an atmospheric feeling of a world unique, and makes the eerie mood even darker.
Everything just goes up into a higher heavenly or should I say hellish dimension, this is pure magic.
Another Second To Be can be described as a short and intense cut with a nice forceful drive.
Like so many of the other songs it has a huge chorus as a central component, there is just something extremely powerful about them and I can't think of another band that has developed this aspect to such an important element in their songs as
Accept.
Walking In The Shadow follows a calmer style and it is a song like this one that keeps the album from reaching a pure 10, which I for many years felt was the right rating, but after more intense evaluation I found some aspects that keeps it from that, the highest of ratings.
Walking In The Shadow is a great track but not with the same energized and unique content as some of the above mentioned ones, the chorus being a bit too tame, its grooving rhythm section working fine though.
Man Enough To Cry also has something that keeps it from being in league with the majority, the guitar work is flawless and solid but the overall flow of the main rhythm is just a bit too ordinary to reach the land of immortal songs.
Stand Tight ends this fascinating adventure and
impresses with its original and hymn-like chorus and the ingenious lead guitar section.
After 43 minutes of thrilling classical Metal it seems quite clear that this band really had something special to offer and pieces like this one is an important part of Metal history.
I guess my pretty extensive description of the songs should give a clear impression of the musical quality of this release, but let me just say it again, these guys rule!
For a 1986 album I must say that the sound is very good, the balance between all instruments is nicely weighed and the very tight overall vibe is working perfect with the musical style.
Reflection upon this astonishing release I continue to be amazed of its diverse flow, you really get a whole bunch of different and captivating music on this disc, and it will forever be found regularly in my stereo. This is the creation of legends!
Written by
Tommy Thursday, August 22, 2002
Show all reviews by TommyRatingsTommy: 9.5/10Members: 7/10 - Average of 2 ratings.
Member ratings
 | Steen (Staff)
Rating: 7/10
Some of the fun from Balls To The Wall is gone but replaced by more mature sounding songs.... · Read more · |
 | notrap
Rating: 7/10
Never had this record (only knew Man Enough to Cry).
I recently buy it just to check what... · Read more · |
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