Accept – Restless and Wild – 1982

Restless and Wild came out a bit before I got really interested in Accept. Balls to the Wall was the album that had me open ut my ears for them. I did have a friend who owned their previous album Breaker and there are songs on there I love. But I never got that album myself back in the day and he refused to play it when I came to visit him. I still don’t know why he had that album lol!

But listening to Restless and Wild today brings back a few memories. There are songs on there that are true classics, not just for an Accept fan, but for any Metal fan really. Musically it’s somewhere on the borderline between classic Hardrock and the more modern Metal style. I don’t know when that transmission was made really. Accept were early on, that’s for sure. It’s hard to comprehend when you listen to their latest albums that sound very fresh and with a lot of the elements that started so long ago.

Harmonies

I know I’ve said it before but Accept did have a special way of doing the harmonies. It wasn’t so obvious early on but on Restless and Wild, you can clearly hear the attempt for a male choir in the background. I’m not so good at these early albums, I haven’t heard them in a long time. But compared to the debut album, which wasn’t so long ago I listened to, Udo Dirkschneider certainly has developed his own sound. This is the singer that became famous, not that other dude from the debut album. It’s the same physical guy of course, but here he has grown into something more.

The guitars are also more mature here. There are a few songs, the classics more or less, that really use the guitars in a great way. The riffs are catchy and easily recognizable. The problem is that there are too many songs that are still pretty anonymous. It’s a good album, but the songwriting isn’t there yet.