ACCEPT - indigo at The O2, London — 28 August 2026 - 50th Anniversary Tour

Review by Robert Corich

Fifty years of Accept. Stop and think about that for a moment. Half a century of Teutonic thunder, leather, studs, twin guitars and enough decibels to make the fillings in your teeth reconsider their career choices.

And at the indigo at The O2, Accept arrived determined to demonstrate that 50 years is merely an excuse for another very good reason to turn everything up to eleven.

From the opening blast of Metal Heart, followed by Teutonic Terror and Restless and Wild, there was absolutely no messing about. Any notion that this might be some genteel anniversary retrospective was comprehensively blown out of the building.

This is Accept as they should be heard — loud, muscular, unapologetic and gloriously heavy.

London Leatherboys, Midnight Mover and Run If You Can kept the momentum firmly in place before the rather tasty Monster Man / Aiming High / Wrong Is Right medley. These songs may have a few decades on the clock, but they haven’t aged a day where it matters. Accept have always understood the simple beauty of a great riff, a pounding rhythm section and the instruction to stop messing about and get on with it.

At the centre of it all, of course, is long-standing guitarist Wolf Hoffmann, the one constant presence through Accept’s remarkable five decades. And then there’s Mark Tornillo, who has now been the voice of Accept for 17 years.

But talking of voices, it would be rather remiss in a 50th anniversary celebration not to acknowledge Udo Dirkschneider, who was absolutely paramount to Accept’s development — and, indeed, their eventual acceptance! His distinctive, gravelly delivery became such an integral part of the band’s identity that his shadow inevitably hangs over any performance of this material.

I’ve seen Udo many times over the years and thoroughly enjoyed those shows too, so this isn’t about choosing one singer over another. Mark Tornillo has his own voice and his own way of approaching these songs, and after 17 years at the helm, he’s more than earned his place in Accept’s continuing story.

And that makes the setlist particularly interesting. When the individual songs within the medleys are counted, 21 of the 23 songs played were written and recorded before Tornillo joined the band in 2009, with only Teutonic Terror and Pandemic coming from his era.

That’s some formidable musical history for any singer to step into, but Tornillo has never sounded as though he’s attempting some sort of Udo Dirkschneider impersonation. He puts his own stamp on the material, and his voice has proved remarkably well suited to these old songs.

Love Child, Fight It Back, Up to the Limit and Breaker provided another formidable run of classics, with Princess of the Dawn an inevitable highlight for the faithful.

Then came Demon’s Night / Starlight / Losers and Winners / Flash Rockin’ Man, a wonderfully indulgent reminder of just how deep that classic Accept catalogue runs.

There was also an interesting little musical spirit hanging around.

At times, the ghost of Lemmy and Motörhead seemed to be lurking somewhere in the vicinity, particularly during some of the more relentlessly driving passages. The Motörhead period that kept coming to mind was very much the Overkill through Orgasmatron era — that gloriously dirty, grinding, hard-driving combination of heavy metal and rock’n’roll that Lemmy made so unmistakably his own.

There were moments when I could almost picture him lurking behind the amps, swigging a bottle of Jack Daniels beside his fruit machine in the old St Moritz Club, casting a knowing glance towards the stage and approving of what he was hearing.

Although, being Teutonic metallers, I suspect the Accept boys might have been more inclined to raise a glass of schnapps with him than join him on the Jack.

Pandemic was excellent — a real powerhouse and one of the evening’s highlights. It certainly didn’t sound out of place among the classics; if anything, it underlined that Accept’s later material can hold its own.

Then came the encore: Fast as a Shark, Son of a Bitch and, inevitably, Balls to the Wall.

Quite frankly, if you can stand still through Fast as a Shark, you probably need to have your pulse checked.

And just when it seemed proceedings were over, Burning was added as a final flourish, replacing the listed I’m a Rebel. A suitably fiery way to finish.

What strikes me most is that Accept don’t appear remotely interested in treating fifty years as some sort of museum-piece anniversary. This isn’t a band standing around admiring its own history. These songs are still being played with considerable force, and the audience clearly hasn’t forgotten why they fell in love with them in the first place.

And then, rather unexpectedly, there was a second helping.

Having seen Accept at the indigo, I then found myself at Stonedead Festival the following day — and, would you believe it, there they were again! Accept, no less, appearing just before the headliners. This time the Teutonic machine had around an hour rather than the fuller O2 set, but it was enough to provide a rather surreal Accept two days running experience.

Accept two days running? I suppose one just has to have acceptance that metal rules!

There are bands who celebrate an anniversary by looking backwards.

Accept simply turn around, pick up the hammer and hit you with it again.

Metal as metal should be played — loud, powerful, uncompromising and with precision. And with Germans at the helm, you know it’s going to be delivered with precision.

Fifty years on, the metal heart is still beating — and it was beating very loudly indeed. Long may that remain the case.

Accept @ Stonedead Festival - picture courtesy of Paul Monkhouse