Accept

Accept came roaring out of Solingen, Germany, and in 1983 they finally rammed the door open with Balls to the Wall, their fifth studio album and the only one to go gold in the United States and Canada. The title track was a slab of steel-toed marching metal, with Udo Dirkschneider rasping over riffs that stomped rather than strolled.

The classic crew behind it was Dirkschneider on lead vocals, Wolf Hoffmann on lead guitar, Peter Baltes on bass, Jörg Fischer on rhythm guitar and Stefan Kaufmann on drums. A year earlier Restless and Wild had shown the other side of them: "Fast as a Shark" goes off like a pneumatic drill, and it is no stretch to hear why Accept get credit for pushing metal toward the speed and thrash that followed. They were part of the German heavy metal scene that had come together by the middle of the decade.

Holding a lineup together proved harder. Dirkschneider left, David Reece sang on Eat the Heat in 1989, and the band broke up months later. Udo came back for a reunion in 1992 that lasted until 1997, there was a brief return in 2005, and in 2009 they regrouped for good with Mark Tornillo, formerly of T.T. Quick, after Dirkschneider declined. The Tornillo records put Accept back in the German top ten, and through every split Hoffmann has been the one constant.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.