Accept: Diving Into Sin

There’s a song on ACCEPT’s The Rise Of Chaos album titled Analog Man, which explains a lot about their position in the world. It’s a relatively light-hearted number about trying and failing to keep up with modern technology. Singer Mark Tornillo laments that “my cellphone is smarter than me,” and longs for the days before digital technology took over everything. It’s a song about the intense frustration of feeling left behind, but it’s also not entirely serious and comes across as a very self-deprecating depiction of an older man who can’t get his new laptop to work.

“For all intents and purposes, I am the Analog Man,” Mark laughs when joining us (somewhat ironically) over Zoom. “I hate technology. I’d take this iPhone and throw it in the water, take a time machine back to the seventies and stay there. But it is what it is, you’ve gotta change with the times.”

This theme of being at odds with the contemporary world is one that ACCEPT have tackled before, most noticeably on 2021’s Too Mean To Die. That album had songs that parodied fame-hungry social media influencers and compared phone addiction to a zombie outbreak, but they were always comparatively upbeat. On their seventeenth full-length though, things take a darker edge.

Humanoid has a cynical outlook on how rapidly things are progressing. The artwork features subjugated humans with their heads bowed and a blank-faced, glowing-eyed robot stood over them. It’s reminiscent of bleak, pre-Star Wars science fiction and reflects their fears about AI very well.

“AI is a tool, but it could be used to better humanity or take us off the planet. It depends on who is programming it, who is using it and what it’s being used for,” Mark says. “It’s got a way to go yet, but the prospects are frightening of what it could become. We’ve got programs now that can write the lyrics, write the music, where are bands going to be in ten years? That’s just the music industry, attach AI to something else and I don’t know where we’ll be.”

On the surface, this is unfamiliar territory for ACCEPT. Science fiction isn’t a topic they’ve drawn from much, and the concept of computer programs developing into a threat sounds more like one that FEAR FACTORY would pursue. However, ACCEPT have always had an under-appreciated political side (look closer at the lyrics to Balls To The Wall), and like it or not, AI is no longer a far-off idea. It’s real, it’s being implemented into everyday life and is a hot button issue. Every time a band attempts to use artificially generated artwork, it becomes obvious how deep people’s feelings go.

While Humanoid has an ominous side though, ACCEPT’s signature sense of fun is alive and well. The album deals with weighty issues, but it’s also an absolute blast. Diving Into Sin opens proceedings with upbeat melodies, a big catchy chorus and Wolf Hoffmann’s ever present crunchy guitar riffs. Straight Up Jack is an uncomplicated drinking song, while Unbreakable is an anthemic tribute to the beauty of heavy metal itself. Mark is pushing seventy now, but he’s still in love with his favourite music.

“Metal is a family, not a fad. It’s something you hold onto, in fact I’d say metal has you, you don’t have metal. I’m no spring chicken, and I still to this day am listening to JUDAS PRIEST, IRON MAIDEN, AC/DC, BLACK SABBATH. I want to hear something heavy. I’ll be at the gym hearing the crap they play on the speakers and asking around like, ‘do you like this shit? You don’t? Why are they playing it?’ Headphones on, bye.”

ACCEPT have carved out a legacy that rivals his favourite bands and could easily have rested on their laurels, but a lot of work has gone into making Humanoid as good as it is. This shouldn’t be surprising; ever since Mark joined during their 2009 comeback, they’ve refused to become a ‘Greatest Hits’ act. Take a look through their setlists and you’ll find as much emphasis on the newer material as on the classics.

“We decided when I first joined the band that we weren’t going to rest on past glory and just play the eighties stuff. We had to be a real band, I don’t think I’d have joined otherwise,” he explains. “It gets more difficult with every album to pick the set, there’s like four or five songs we have to play otherwise we’d never make it out of the shows alive, but we try to mix it up. There’s loads where I’ve thought ‘wow, why didn’t we ever play that one live,’ but you’ve got time constraints. You’ve got to push the latest album and play a few songs from that, then you add the classics and you’re running out of time. But it’s a good position to be in, we’re not stuck for material.”

So even with the number of candles on his birthday cakes reaching fire-hazard levels, there’s an abundance of life and energy left in Mark Tornillo and his bandmates. ACCEPT have always looked to the future, and while they might be more concerned about what awaits mankind, so long as they have gas left in the tank, they’ll keep churning out the tunes.

And in hindsight, given how he was treated online when he first joined the band, it’s a miracle it’s taken fifteen years for him to write about how much technology sucks. “Don’t read the comments. When we first started out, it drove me wild,” he says. “Before Blood Of The Nations came out, there was such a negative attitude towards us and I was getting destroyed. We turned it around once the record came out and the naysayers stopped.”

Humanoid is out now via Napalm Records. 

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