Accept previous release was really a great album, a few tracks held the band to achieve true masterpiece status on the release but it managed to bring back thrills from the past with a more powerful nowaday sound. Stalingrad is the logical continuation. What is apparent is that the band's previous comeback and now confirmed with this new album seems to announe a solid future for the band.

From the first song Hung, Drawn and Quartered, it is evidently clear from the beginning that Accept will again delivered another great album. Sure the current singer Mark Tornillo can easily be categorized as an Udo clone but that's a good thing for me, as this is how Accept vocals should sound like anyway. Sure Udo would (maybe) be a better fit but I like the fact that there are two bands out there delivering some great classic heavy metal albums such as this Stalingrad. The album is heavy and there is a good mix of old classic sound with new elements. Some nice faster tracks like on Flash To Bang Time with vocals going the Judas Priest way are also welcomed additions. Definitely a headbanger's album, riff driven like any good Accept release, with sweet melodies mixed in for good measure. I love the melodic and sometimes complex guitar work presented throughout the album. There are some really great songs in this album and my only complaint is maybe the fact that some of them don't deliver the choruses they deserved, like Twist of Fate or The Galley (which somehow is a bit painful as an album closer as it really doesn't bring anything but a filler ender track, not to mention it's long length being weaker of the album). But that's nitpicking, though sometimes the saying "less is more" could easily apply here (remove The Galley and the album would be much better as a whole). As a rule I've decided to make my reviews shorter, while I'm sure I'll let my predisposed chattiness get the better of me on occasion ;), I will strive to keep my reviews more digestable and to the point from now on (for better or for worse you decide).

My apologizes for my late delivery of this review, I should have done it much earlier but my backlog of albums to review is really huge (easily 20+ albums late), I'll try to get back to a more manageable pile by releasing more (and shorter) reviews from now on but it's not always easy to find the time. In the end Accept delivers a solid, probably on par or slightly better (though shorter) than it's predecessor Blood of the Nations. But things look definitely positive for the future of the band as they seem on the right course and the horrors like Predator are hopefully just a bad memory unlikely to come back to haunt us. For both fans of the classic era and current Heavy Metal sound, Accept is still here to make us head bang with style and presence and that alone is something to cherish if you ask me.