“Fast as a Shark” by Accept

"Fast as a Shark" came off Accept's 1982 album Restless and Wild, and it opens with a prank: a scratchy snippet of an old children's recording of the traditional German tune "Ein Heller und ein Batzen", meant as a funny contrast with the metal to come. The joke ran deeper, because the young voice on that record belonged to Dieter Dierks, in whose studio they were making the album.

Then Stefan Kaufmann's double bass drums kick in at full gallop, and that drumming is the song's legacy, now counted as a big step forward in the growth of speed, thrash and power metal. Udo Dirkschneider sings, Wolf Hoffmann and Jörg Fischer play the guitars, Peter Baltes plays bass, and all five share the writing credit. Martin Popoff ranked it 33rd in his book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time.

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