dan's jams - music reviews

Metal Heart was one of my first metal albums, so I look on it rather fondly. It didn't fit right in with the current wave of metal that was going on at the time, what with hair bands in full control and less image concious bands like Accept, Iron Maiden, and Metallica still slowly roasting on a back burner. And no, don't even try to tell me that Udo's weird little green camo outfits counted as an image for Accept; if anything it counted against them.

But, Metal Heart stands well on it's own outside of the pretension of image and radio hits. Accept always wrote with a strong German bent to their music (read: classically influenced), and this album is no exception, but also serves up a nice slab of diversity. Some may recall the extremely small single "Midnight Mover" or it's video from Headbanger's Ball/Night Flight, and it was rather put together as a single normally is, but still manages to hang on to that Accept sound, as does "Living For Tonight" (arguably a better song). "Up to the Limit" and "Too High To Get It Right" are straight ahead rockera, "Wrong is Right" was a fast-paced double-bassing near-thrasher, "Screaming For A Love-Bite" is their one hair metal sounding track (that also re-affirms to the listener that no, English is not their first language). "Teach Us To Survive" comes in all jazzy and explodes into a straight on power tune. The whole album winds up on the anthemic opening strains of "Bound To Fail" that also serve as the albums outro - very classically influenced.