#wolf hoffman

My Top 5 Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Bands (In no particular order)

Judas Priest

Accept

Dokken

Alice Cooper

Accept: I’m a Rebel (1980)

A few years before they gained worldwide renown for putting their Balls to the Wall, Germany’s Accept were still grappling with their musical identity on 1980’s I’m a Rebel -- which boasted different covers in different territories (see above), mine being the U.S. pressing.

But the group’s sophomore LP did show a marked improvement over their even less focused, lackluster debut, with new songs like “Thunder and Lightning,” “China Lady” and “Do It” previewing at least a fraction of the band's future metallic power and trademark guitar crunch.

Producer Dirk Steffens also captured Udo Dirkschneider’s gravelly shriek properly for the first time, yet he still felt compelled to press bassist Peter Baltes into lead vocal service on the album’s two, high-caliber ballads, “No Time to Lose” and “The King,” ultimately delaying Accept’s maturation, no matter how well Baltes acquitted himself.

Other mistakes included glam makeup (see above) and the disco bass polluting “Save Us” and “I Wanna Be No Hero,” but the band were slowly finding their feet as songwriters -- even though I’m a Rebel’s most impressive number, its title cut, was penned by an unlikely outsider of AC/DC lineage: Alex Young.

One of Malcolm and Angus’ older brothers (all of 15 years older than Mal, 17 older than Ang), Alex had remained in Scotland to pursue a musical career (under the stage name George Alexander) while the rest of the family emigrated to Australia, ultimately carving out a solid session man’s career.

So when he saw his baby brothers achieving so much success with AC/DC (and before them, brother George’s Easybeats), Alex wrote “I’m a Rebel” -- recorded in 1976 but unused by his siblings, before Accept embraced it, right here, so there you have it! 

Anyway, all these were small but important steps for Accept, which improved again by leaps and bounds on the following year’s Breaker, and, thus, came that much closer to becoming Germany's second most successful metal band, after the Scorpions.

p.s. -- I included “I’m a Rebel” in this list of ‘AC/DC Songs Not Written by AC/DC’ in Ultimate Classic Rock.