Eat the Heat by Accept

Eat the Heat, Accept's eighth studio album, came out on RCA in 1989, and it was the sound of the German metal machine trying to run without its engine. Udo Dirkschneider was gone, and David Reece stepped in for what became his only album with the band. Dieter Dierks produced it at Dierks Studios in Cologne, working from September 1988 into January 1989.

Wolf Hoffmann played every guitar on the record, even though Jim Stacey is pictured as the rhythm player (he handled second guitar on the road), and the riffs come polished and radio-bright, edging toward glam and away from the steel-toed stomp of old. The old voice does sneak in: U.D.O. adds crowd vocals to "Turn the Wheel", and Accept later rebuilt "Generation Clash" as "Generation Clash II" with Dirkschneider singing, on 1994's Death Row. The band split several months after this came out, and it stayed their only Udo-less album until 2010's Blood of the Nations.

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