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“I am just so excited about \u00bbHeadbangers Symphony\u00ab. It has taken a long, long time but here we are, it’s done, finally!”<\/i> Wolf <\/b>is just bursting with vigor as he talks about his latest labor of love. But why now? “It’s truly coincidental, after we completed the last ACCEPT tour, I finally had the time to finish it. I started this a few years ago. The early recordings have been sitting in my archives in my home studio for years, almost completed. The reality was that with the continued success of ACCEPT, I was only able to work on it when ACCEPT was not recording or touring.”<\/i><\/div>\n
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The prevalent early challenge was to pick the most suitable compositions. This was an exploratory process that only increased Wolf<\/b>‘s adoration for the classics. “I always listen to classical music, it’s always playing throughout my house. I have a huge collection of classics and as I listen – often at random, I take notes if something truly strikes me. When I notice that this or that could work in a translation to rock or heavy metal, I remember it and I pursue it! This has been going on for a long time!”<\/i><\/div>\n
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There are several reasons for the necessary experimentations that faced Wolf<\/b>. Most classical compositions were written to be performed by a full orchestra. The fluid timing, those multiple, complex layers and sections that stretched out for lengthy periods, classical music was simply never designed to be played to the rigid beat so prevalent in rock ‘n’ roll.<\/div>\n
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\u00bbHeadbangers Symphony\u00ab<\/b> showcases an overabundance of highly skilled improvisations. Wolf<\/b> took the main pieces, and then wrote riffs that fit them. Lastly, in the grand hard rock tradition, he layered a guitar solo over it. He shaped the sound into a quite adventurous elegance, but the key themes of the originals remained.<\/div>\n
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The first volume had a focus on the better known pieces; the second – \u00bbHeadbangers Symphony\u00ab<\/b> – takes a similar approach. “In general, it does follow the same path,”<\/i> admits Wolf<\/b>, “but this time I did try to add a couple lesser known compositions. Mostly though, listeners will say, hey, I know that melody\u2026 so it\u2019s pretty much the same path as the \u00bbClassical\u00ab record. It was my desire to record melodies I like and melodies people recognise.”<\/i><\/div>\n
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Now that the album is done, Wolf <\/b>is proud looking back and is pleased with this true labour of love; something he has wanted to do since the first record \u00bbClassical\u00ab<\/b> came out almost 20 years ago. While ACCEPT<\/b>‘s Peter Baltes<\/b> added several impressive bass lines, and other notable guest musicians made an appearance as well, the bulk of the work was completed by himself and Italian musician and arranger Melo Mafali<\/b>.<\/div>\n
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“There are two major categories,”<\/i> Wolf <\/b>elaborates. “First the heavier stuff like Beethoven, the bombastic, full force epics on which you can simply shred along. Of course then there are the ballads, slower compositions that bring out the deeper feelings in each listener.”<\/i><\/div>\n
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The highlights on \u00bbHeadbangers Symphony\u00ab<\/b> are plentiful and easy to pin point. The album kicks off with ‘Scherzo’<\/b> from the well-known ‘9th Symphony’<\/b> by Ludwig v. Beethoven<\/b>. Many listeners might recognise the opening riff from the ACCEPT <\/b>song ‘Teutonic Terror’<\/b>. “Back in 2009,”<\/i> Wolf <\/b>explains, “when we started working on the songs for the \u00bbBlood Of The Nations\u00ab album, I played the classical demos to our producer Andy Sneap. He liked that riff a lot and insisted on using it for the album. So we wrote ‘Teutonic Terror’ using this “borrowed” riff.”<\/i><\/div>\n
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Other highlights follow in rapid succession: ‘Night On Bald Mountain’<\/b> by Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky<\/b> is a very dramatic dark song on the theme of a witches\u2019 Sabbath, a perfect fit for Wolf<\/b>‘s “metal treatment”. ‘Symphony No. 40’<\/b> by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart<\/b> will be immediately recognisable. “It’s a little more up-tempo, pretty happy, typical for Mozart. Not mean and heavy as most of the other stuff,”<\/i> Wolf <\/b>points out. Additional highpoints include Wolf<\/b>‘s interpretations of such masterworks as Tchaikovsky<\/b>\u2019s ‘Swan Lake’<\/b>, ‘Path\u00e9tique’<\/b> also from Ludwig v. Beethoven<\/b>, ‘M\u00e9ditation’<\/b> from the opera \u00bbThais\u00ab<\/b> by French composer Jules Massenet<\/b>, and of course the aforementioned ‘Madame Butterfly’<\/b>.<\/div>\n
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All in all, the eleven compositions on \u00bbHeadbangers Symphony\u00ab<\/b> paint the perfect portrait of Wolf<\/b>‘s life-long passion for the classics and his adoration for heavy metal. “I worked so much and so long on this until I felt it was ready. Now it is and I am thrilled and proud. This is my baby, my labor of love, ready for me to set it free.”<\/i><\/div>\n
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\u00a0 ACCEPT‘s guitar powerhouse, WOLF HOFFMANN, is set to release his second solo album entitled\u00a0\u00bbHeadbangers Symphony\u00ab, completely dedicated to the grand classic maestros, next week through Nuclear Blast. In joyfol anticipation of this new record, [Read \u00bb]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.powerofmetal.dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

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