ACCEPT Recruits Producer CHRIS 'ZEUSS' HARRIS For Upcoming 50th-Anniversary Album
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In a new interview with Mark Strigl, ACCEPT guitarist Wolf Hoffmann spoke about the band's touring plans beyond a couple of U.S. festival appearances this year, including one at the the M3 Rock Festival in early May at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We're [planning] on another tour in the fall, which I cannot talk about quite yet, but there will be more shows in the U.S. later in the year. They haven't been announced yet, so I can't really say much… And other than that, we're going to Europe. We actually tried to lay low this year because we're gonna be very, very busy next year when we have the 50-year anniversary tour coming up and an album in the works for that. And so there's a lot of stuff happening next year, and we kind of wanted to lay low this year, but then we aren't. All these shows came in, so we're still quite busy."
Asked if longtime ACCEPT producer Andy Sneap will be involved with the band's upcoming 50th-anniversary album, Wolf said: "He will not be on this one, because he asked for a year off from us. I asked him, I begged him to produce his album, but then we found a good buddy of his. His name is Zeuss [Chris Harris]. He's producing it."
Hoffmann continued: "[Andy is] kind of part of the family now, but he's been touring so much with [JUDAS] PRIEST [as that band's touring guitarist], and he's been working so much in the studio last year. I think he did SAXON, he did PRIEST, he also did DREAM THEATER — he's done a bunch of stuff. So when I said, 'Hey, can we work this year again?' He said, 'Man, can I please have a year off?', which is understandable."
Regarding ACCEPT's upcoming 50th-anniversary tour, which is expected to launch at the of the year, Wolf said: "It's gonna be a retrospective of the whole 50-year career and, of course, it's gonna feature a lot of the important stuff from the '80s and some deeper cuts. And we're gonna perform with guest singers and guest players, and it's gonna be super exciting, like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You only have one shot at a 50-year anniversary… I don't think we'll get a chance for another one."
Asked what continues to drive him creatively to keep making new music with ACCEPT, Wolf said: "Well, we're still hungry. I still have the energy and I still have the passion for it, so I don't ever feel like I'm at this point where I've kind of had enough or I wanna retire or anything like that. I'm still full force in it, man. And so is everybody in the band. And that is, I guess, what keeps us motivated and what keeps it going. And it's a lot of fun to create stuff that actually means something to the fans. It would be one thing if we were releasing albums and everybody said, 'You know what? Just play the old songs. We don't really need any new stuff.' But the opposite is true. People are really eating the stuff up, and they're really, really happy and they're respecting the fact that we are still working so hard. So the old songs and the new songs kind of live side by side when we perform live. I mean, at one point the classics are always gonna be the classics and they're gonna be featured on radio more and that sort of thing. But when it comes to live performances. I think the fans really appreciate the fact that we play new stuff."
Sneap produced ACCEPT's last six studio albums: "Blood Of The Nations" (2010),"Stalingrad" (2012),"Blind Rage" (2014),"The Rise Of Chaos" (2017),"Too Mean To Die" (2021) and "Humanoid" (2024).
Zeuss has previously worked with ROB ZOMBIE, HATEBREED, QUEENSRŸCHE, SHADOWS FALL, DEMON HUNTER, OVERKILL and REVOCATION, among many others.
ACCEPT and KK'S PRIEST recently joined forces for a summer/fall 2024 North American tour. The run began on August 31, 2024 in Los Angeles, California, visiting a slew of major cities in the USA and Canada — such as Toronto, Montreal, New York and Nashville — before coming to an end in San Francisco, California on October 7, 2024.(Source: www.blabbermouth.net)
