As 2024 rolls on, so does the 40 year anniversary celebration of the music of 1984. Today I’m going to loosen the constraints of release dates a bit and include one of metal’s landmark albums in this celebration.

Accept – Balls To The Wall

Released January 1984 (US) via Portrait Records

My Favorite Tracks – Balls To The Wall, London Leatherboys, Losers And Winners

Accept’s fifth album was released just on the “border” of a year – it came out in December 1983 across their native Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but was held back until January 1984 in the US. Its impact would be felt in 1984 and beyond so I am including it in this 1984-versary thing.

Accept’s line-up has never been one prone to long periods of stability, though most of the same group was around from the band’s prior effort Restless And Wild. Udo Dirkschneider provided his unique vocals while bandleader Wolf Hoffmann was the lead guitarist. Joining the band for this set was guitarist Herman Frank, who would be gone before the next album. Carrying on in their positions on bass and drums were Peter Baltes and Stefan Kaufmann, respectively.

Balls To The Wall was self-produced by Accept. All songwriting is credited to the band equally. Lyrics are credited to Accept and “Deaffy,” a pen name for Gaby Hauke. Hauke was Accept’s manager and would also marry Wolf Hoffmann.

The album covers offers a striking visual and was inspired by a 1977 image from photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. This cover, along with the songs London Leatherboys and Love Child, had some complaining about Accept being homoerotic. Band members and Gaby Hauke have stated that Love Child was about the suppressed gay community but overall the complaints about their links to homosexuality simply helped get Accept’s name out there more.

Today’s album offers up 10 songs in 45 minutes, a standard rock and metal offering at the time. Several reissue versions of the album exist and seem to contain various live bonus tracks, I’m not aware of any sort of demos or unreleased outtake versions of anything.

Balls To The Wall

The album opens with the title track and the song that came to be Accept’s defining moment. Much like the rest of the album, the song is tough and to the point. The riffing is simple yet aggressive and everything is in just the right spot without any embellishment.

Udo does a great job with quieter verses and loud pre-chorus dynamic, then launching into the song’s title for the to-the-point chorus. The lyrics are a manifesto for the downtrodden and oppressed, the song one of a revolution of the masses against those who keep them down.

Accept have a handful of songs as jewels in their crown, but none shine brighter than Balls To The Wall. This broke across MTV in 1984 and remained in rotation well past that. This is Accept’s signature anthem.

London Leatherboys

One of the songs that was mistakenly pegged as “homoerotic,” any cursory reading of the lyrics would offer that it’s clearly about biker culture. This is more guitar work that tells a story with riffing and without a lot of flash, Wolf’s excellent yet brief solo aside. It’s easy to chant along and headbang to, which means one big mission accomplished.

Fight It Back

Another revolution anthem here, this one has such a great turn from verse to chorus both musically and vocally, it’s impossible to not get sucked into this one. It moves at a nice clip and remains easy to digest and appreciate. Though the song is short, this one does get a lengthy solo.

Head Over Heels

This one is a total ’80’s melodic metal song. Udo delivers a very wordy chorus but glides right through it, almost rapping it. It seems someone found some nefarious activity going on at night in a park, and wound up enjoying what they found.

Losing More Than You’ve Ever Had

This one keeps the ’80’s alive and well as it rocks through a tragic tale of a guy losing his girl to another man, this other man being Udo. It’s not a bragging story, instead Udo cautions the guy how his own faults led to the split with his woman. A bit more sophisticated take on the “I stole your girl” trope found through ’80’s rock.

Love Child

It’s the song that actually was about homosexuality. Accept members have said they viewed the gay community as oppressed in the ’80’s, which is very much true, and the band’s aim was to focus on suppressed people in their lyrics through this time. It’s a song about someone out on the prowl and confused about his feelings toward a guy. It’s another groovy and basic tune that plenty of people probably headbanged to without knowing what the hell it was about.

Turn Me On

A nice dirty rocker about finding a lover and a spot to have at it, getting the deed done and getting out real quick. It’s “the ol in-out” from A Clockwork Orange fame. The line between love and lust may be a fine one, but here everything is clearly on the lust side.

Losers And Winners

This song goes into turbo mode and it’s another tale of Udo getting the girl that someone else wants. The girl doesn’t want the other guy so Udo slides in to take advantage of the situation. Udo offers up some sage advice, like “take it easy and screw the girl that’s next to you.” The lyrics here are honestly a bit of a laugh riot and are worth reading along to. And the song totally rocks out, putting the track far above the honestly goofy as all hell premise of the lyrics.

Guardian Of The Night

The song itself is another upbeat rocking track, though the lyrics are fairly dismal. Here is a man who is left to live in the night, shunning the light of day and the normal life of most people. It does seem this night owl lives a pretty brutal life and is on the wrong side of society.

Winter Dreams

The album closes with a bit of a ballad. It’s a nice, simple song about the calm and peaceful side of winter. Winter nights can be very pleasant and this song communicates that very well. The song is a bit of a curveball after nine straight ahead headbanging tracks but it also isn’t a vast departure and it closes the album well.

Balls To The Wall would be Accept’s breakthrough album. It charted modestly in a handful of countries, but it would eventually be certified gold in both Canada and the US, marking the group’s greatest US success.

Accept would roll through the ’80’s with two more solid albums, Metal Heart and Russian Roulette, before long periods of line-up instability and hiatuses plagued them. The band would eventually solidify a new line-up in the late 2000’s that did not include Udo. This modern version of Accept has run consistently through to this day, though not without some roster changes.

But back to the time period at hand – Accept were now players in the ’80’s metal game. Their sound would contribute influence to a wide number of acts across the rock and metal spectrum – anyone from the rising hair band scene to aspiring thrash bands found something to like in Accept. And while Germany had the Scorpions representing them well on the rock front, Accept helped open a wide door for a wealth of German metal acts to spread across the world in the ensuing years.

Accept’s story is long, sometimes complicated and formed of many different parts. But the most central part of that story is Balls To The Wall, the album that offered up the group’s magnum opus and broke the group to worldwide recognition.