Kingcrimsonprog 2017 saw the legendary German Heavy Metal band Accept releasing their fifteenth studio album. It is their fourth album with former TT-Quick vocalist Mark Tornillo handling the vocals and as with all the albums of this era it features the slick polished production style of Andy Sneap and has been released on Nuclear Blast records.

It is noteworthy in that it has a significant line-up change following the departure of Herman Frank and Stefan Scharzmann, who had both been consistently in the band since 2005. They’ve been replaced by former Grave Digger/Rebellion guitarist Uwe Lulis, and War Within’s Christopher Williams joining in to the anchoring presence of Baltes and Hoffmann.

The music on the album is very much of the same formula that the band found renewed success with on their excellent previous three albums. With the same vocal styles and production job as the last three albums and roughly the same musical direction there are a lot of similarities with those previous three records and so, if you like those and want more of the same then this is a highly recommended album.

If you want some diversity, new ideas, or progression then this album isn’t for you. If you didn’t like the previous ones due to the production or vocals, this isn’t for you. Luckily for me, I am an absolute blind fanboy to the Tornillo era of Accept, and simply can’t get enough. I really enjoyed the recent Restless & Live concert release from this current line-up too.

One thing I would mention is that it is slightly safer and less energetic in terms of performance. I wouldn’t use the phrase ‘firing-on-all-cylinders’ or ‘firecracker’ anymore, although the difference is so slight it will only come up if you are sat directly looking for criticism. This is seriously top quality stuff, don’t be fooled into thinking otherwise.

Album highlights include the firey opener ‘Die By The Sword,’ the nostalgia fueled ‘Analogue Man’ and the uplifting ‘Weight Of The World. ‘ To be fair its all solid, with absolutely no filler.

Overall; The Rise Of Chaos is more of the same from Accept and a very good installment of that. Unless you don’t like them recently as it is, or are actively looking for faults this is a rock solid and very entertaining addition to their catalogue and you’d be mad to miss it.

Kev Rowland

Accept’s last album, ‘Blind Rage’, reached #1 in Germany and Finland, as well as several top 10 positions; Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and last but not least, the US. For a band that released their debut back in the Seventies, and have been following a fairly uncompromising path ever since, that is quite an achievement. So why change something that obviously works? This is straight forward basic heavy metal that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on 1983’s ‘Balls To The Wall’, but they know what their audience wants. One thing I have always liked about Accept is that one knows exactly what the album is going to sound like when the CD gets into the player, and by using Andy Sneap as producer one is also guaranteed that the production quality is going to be of the very highest order.

If you like Accept then you’ll enjoy this, and if you haven’t come across them before as you have been residing down a hobbit hole, then basic HM doesn’t get any better than this. Good and solid without being essential.