Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Mark Strigl, Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffmann discussed the band’s current plans. The group will be playing some shows later this year and are also preparing for a 50th anniversary tour and album.

Hoffman said the following:

“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.”

He continued when asked if Andy Sneap will be producing the upcoming album:

“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.

[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.”

He also addressed the 50th anniversary tour:

“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.”

He also added the following when asked what drives him to keep making new music:

“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.”

[via Blabbermouth]