ALBUM REVIEW: Too Mean To Die – Accept

This far into their career, it almost seems superfluous to review ACCEPT. With fifteen albums behind them and over thirty-active years on the road, their legacy is already assured. It almost doesn’t matter whether Too Mean To Die is good, those festival headline slots and sold out tours are guaranteed for life. This could be eleven tracks of phoned-in, paint-by-numbers drivel and it’d still generate millions of streams.

As much fun as punching up is though, it’s great to say that Too Mean To Die is terrific. These elder statesmen have loads of gas left in the tank and their post-reunion winning streak doesn’t stumble here. ACCEPT can do hard-rocking good times and macho, chest-beating as well as anybody and their sixteenth full-length is a grin-inducing cure for the winter blues.

It’s also notable for how much lyrical depth it has going on. At a purely surface level, Zombie Apocalypse is another heavy metal song about the walking dead, but it doesn’t take much digging to realise there’s more going on. Mark Tornillo and friends have seen people perpetually glued to their phone screens or mindlessly following fashionable trends and written a song about it, disguised as a zombie horror. Yes, that might be a topic that the film industry was exploring as far back as the seventies, but it demonstrates that there’s more to these guys than party anthems like Balls To The Wall. The fact it rules helps as well.

The theme of being at odds with the world continues with cuts like Overnight Sensation (a gentle piss-take of Instagram Like hunters) and the barnstorming title track. It’s all done with a beaming smile and a defiant sense of fun though, so even if ACCEPT are poking fun at the youngsters, they’re easy to like. The slamming power chords and Tornillo’s skyscraper-levelling vocals are formidable too.

Elsewhere, Sucks To Be You is a raised-middle-finger of a party song, but the excellent Symphony Of Pain threatens to steal the show. This one has all the energy of a locked-down five-year-old that’s eaten all of dad’s chocolate and doesn’t want to do her schoolwork, but luckily is way more entertaining. The squealing solos, big riffs and booming chorus all make this a classic ACCEPT song, the kind you want playing while riding a motorcycle to your death.

And yet it isn’t the most memorable, that honour goes to The Best Is Yet To Come. A more subdued and introspective number, this one at first glance feels like the token ballad. Pay attention though and it quickly becomes apparent that it’s way more optimistic than it seems. If it were an instrumental this would be a real tear-jerker, but the lyrics elevate it into something greater. When the lighters get raised for this one, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

Whether you’ve been a fan since their early days or if this is your very first experience with them then, Too Mean To Die is an early highlight for heavy metal in 2021. ACCEPT have been riding high since their reunion and their recent run of albums is arguably better than their classic-era material. They’ve earned the right to put their feet up but instead their sixteenth record sees them charging into the ring with fists swinging.

Rating: 8/10

Too Mean To Die is set for release on January 29th via Nuclear Blast Records. 

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