Accept - Blood of the Nations (2010)^{Release ID: 3488}

One of the reasons why I don't care for Accept despite them basically writing half the material of 90% of power metal bands is the legendary Udo. He has a certain voice that I enjoy about as much as I enjoy hearing gunshots in the middle of the night. Blood of the Nations doesn't have Udo, as he has a successful enough solo career and apparently enough animosity with Wolf Hoffmann to not wish to appear for their big reunion album. So, now they got the much less annoying and much less German Mark Tornillo, out of TT Quick. Which is something I didn't really know ever. He's not some younger fellow that the old man bosses around, though considering who he is I don't doubt Tornillo didn't want to rock the boat now that he was in his dream role.
Unfortunately, I don't really care for this anymore than I do their classic period. I have a lot of minor issues but nothing really major. Andy Sneap did the production, but it's not one of his more annoying works. Doesn't fall into most modern metal production pitfalls. It's good, but nothing really feels like it excels. Nothing I would necessarily object to if forced to listen to, but I would hardly listen to it randomly myself.
Hoffmann is good at writing riffs, but he was never the best soloist. In fact, now, he's downright boring. At least I assume it's Hoffmann. I feel like I sort of gave up on the quality of these when I recognized a solo from not only an earlier album, but the same solo repeated twice, practically note for note. Also not helping, the bizarre insistence on writing long songs, very few of the tracks last as long as they should, some going on for a tedious 7 minutes. Brevity is the soul of wit as far as the kind of music Accept is going for, and this is so not brevity.
Ultimately, I don't think the positive work out too well for the album. It feels somewhat like a focus tested version of what a metal album should be like.