05. Accept Balls to the Wall 1984 (RCA)
Heavy Metal
Boys dressed in leather and girls dressed in lace.
The Lowdown
Balls to the Wall is the middle album in the trio of Accept’s most celebrated albums with the highly infleuntial
Restless and Wild (see review) and the lessser appreciated
Metal Heart either side of it, but it’s
Balls to the Wall that is the most celebrated of these albums due to its commercial success and it’s the reason why most metal listeners know this German band. At the time of
Balls to the Wall, Accept briefly attained the lofty heights of fellow teutonic band the Scorpions stateside and it was at a time when German metal had reached unprecedented heights of popularity around the world, and for this reason alone Accept should be given credit for opening the floodgates as it were for metal listeners around the world, to really appreciate what the non-British and non-American bands had to offer the metal genre. Also Accept were always one of the archetypal metal bands circa the 1983-1984 period, for the simple reason that they incorporated all the aspects that were predominant in metal at this time (blazing twin guitars, thumping bass and ferocious drumming to name just a few) which all resulted in some pretty mean sounding fist-pumping metal from them. Their style saw them issue out centralist metal that could easily appeal to listeners of artists like Judas Priest to Dio, basically good honest metal. According to music reviewer Martin Popoff who happens to be one of my favourite reviwers of anything metal, he views
Balls to the Wall as the perfect example of what a metal album should be and that is higlighted by what he terms as ‘clean and restrained riffing’ meaning of course that the album resulted in being a totally focused piece of metal, in fact he puts it as the best metal album of the 1980s, very high praise indeed. It’s best known track is its title “Balls to the Wall” from my point of view this represents one of the most essential metal songs around and is so archetypal of what I view pure metal to be. The song has Udo Dirkschneider the pint-sized powerhouse vocalist of the band almost rambling through the song in his famous gruff style, before finally exploding into clean power for the song’s explosive chorus section, making the song one of the ultimate metal statements of the decade. As well known as the title track is, the album cover also took quite a bit of flack expecially in the USA, where its overtly gay overtones upset the censor there (remember this was a time when the PMRC were hot against anything that was metal and saw devil worshippers and society subversives behind nearly every metal release) In Europe of course the album cover was really just another album cover, but I guess the album cover could easily be seen as being uber-gay and the album’s second track “London Leatherboys” along with the title track add further flames to that fire. Now down to the album proper which of course starts with the aformentioned metal masterpiece “Balls to the Wall” and its accompanying cheesy video within the backdrop of a wasteland (en-vogue at the time) has all three of its guitarists moving in that corny unison typical of metal at this time, video aside this is such a metal statement. “London Leatherboys” as expected is full of highly charged lyrics of a sexual nature and basically could be a Judas Priest track from this period. Third track “Fight Back” is about as close as the band get to anything on the more thrashy
Restless and Wild and it’s a very good song, as is the fourth track the more melodic “Head Over Heels”. Middle placed tracks like "Losing More Than You've Ever Had" and "Love Child" are great examples of what I'd coin as euro-metallish (influenced by euro-pop of course) "Turn Me On" is a more intense slow builder and re-visits the style laid down on the title track. By the time of "Losers and Winners" and "Guardians of the Night" its obvious that the band just had so many catchy tracks in their locker. The album closer is the acoustic lead "Winter Dreams" which I guess some listeners might have some reservations over but it does work here. Overall
Balls to the Wall is a great slice of traditional 1980s metal and as an metal album it could be described as having a great replay value.
Udo Dirkschneider- Vocals
Wolff Hoffman- Guitar
Hermann Frank- Guitar
Peter Baltes- Bass
Stefan Kaufman- Drums
Production- Accept