Accept was headlining the last day at Metal Hammer Paradise. To be perfectly candid, we had already gotten all that we came for out of the festival, so anything they’d deliver was just going to be icing on the cake, so to speak. Having said that, we’d enjoyed their Copenhell show earlier this summer just fine, so why not give them another go?

Once more, I was struck by the cool looking stage decorations they had, the cogwheels turning and all that. Also, the most important detail - yes, Martin Motnik was now wearing a German flag as a belt buckle.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get on to the show.

An intro with rotating red lights and puffs of smoke announced the band’s coming, something that certainly came to its right here in the dark tent. First song up was once more The Reckoning, a good choice to get things into gear, if we follow the analogy.
The band, now rejoined by ex-member Philip Shouse (Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons Band) as an added third guitarist (if you recall, at Copenhell Accept was playing with Joel Hoekstra), was rocking hard from the start, helped along by a setlist that held both newer material to several long-lived classics. Admittedly, Humanoid isn’t exactly a favourite, but following it with Restless And Wild, and we were quickly back on track. That was actually a thing for the band; even though they were the headlining act and had a good amount of time set aside for them, they were still going quite fast from song to song, keeping things moving at a sharp pace all along, something I appreciated, and impressively, they did it without ever feeling rushed. This was just the perfect tempo for the show, and Accept was nailing it.

Accept was in fact nailing a lot of things with this show, as the delivery turned out to be on fire! Every single one of them were rocking, smiling, having an absolute last, and everyone was given time in the spotlight, with solo’s and the like going seamlessly from one musician to the next. It would be impossible to pinpoint a single standout performance here, as everyone was working together so well. The show was really being pushed far across the edge of the stage and into the hungry crowd!
Of course, a crowd is very much a part of a show such as this, more or less on equal terms with the band - the energy has to go both ways. Jumping, headbanging, and of course singing. There was a lot of singing, especially so in the old classic tracks. Princess Of The Dawn got all of the title chorus lines handled by the crowd, and an enthusiastic “oh oh” chanting both in the beginning and the end of the song. During Metal Heart, people were happily singing along to the Für Elise section, and in Fast As A Shark they were singing along to the opening Ein Heller Und Ein Batzen section, but of course it all paled in comparison to the epic sing along that is Balls To The Wall. Fast As A Shark had an inflated shark however, which the crowd got to play with, so the song had that in its favour as well.

When the show was done, Lunah and I looked at each other and agreed that Accept could not possibly have delivered a better show than what we had just been part of. It was, in fact, the ultimate icing on the cake that was Metal Hammer Paradise 2024, and they made the festival live up to its name.

Setlist:

The Reckoning
Humanoid
Restless And Wild
London Leatherboys
Straight Up Jack
Midnight Mover
Breaker
The Abyss
Demon’s Night / Starlight / Losers And Winners / Flash Rockin’ Man
Princess Of The Dawn
Metal Heart
Teutonic Terror
Pandemic
Fast As A Shark
Balls To The Wall
I’m A Rebel