K.K.’s Priest and Accept are currently roaring through their Full Metal Assault Tour across North America, which runs through October 7. It’s the first time guitarist K.K. Downing and Accept axeman Wolf Hoffmann have toured together since the latter’s band opened up for Judas Priest on their 1981 European trek. But you can’t keep two bands stocked with Flying Vs apart, and during a chance encounter on the Monsters of Rock Tour this past March, Hoffmann suggested to Downing that the two groups tour together. Their people talked, and here we are. It kicked off on August 31.
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A “Phenomenal” Package
“The tour’s phenomenal,” Hoffmann declares to American Songwriter. “It’s the perfect combo, isn’t it? Accept was quite influenced by Judas Priest back in the day, so stylistically it’s a perfect match.”
“When I go into the gigs, I’m signing so many albums,” Downing adds. “It’s the same when I leave the building—there’s very dedicated fans. It seems like there’s a real passion there, that they get to see me in the flesh at last, which is very cool for me and makes everything very worthwhile.”
Both bands are touring behind recent releases: K.K. Priest’s sophomore effort The Sinner Rides Again and Accept’s 17th studio album Humanoid. Both are ripe with heavy riffs, twin-guitar assaults, and searing screams and soaring singing.
Metal Groundswell
The positive response to the Full Metal Assault Tour proves the loyalty of many classic metal fans. Back when Priest and Accept toured in 1981, things were a little different. Metal was just starting to develop a groundswell, with a lot of focus on the UK at the time.
“We always talk about the new wave of British heavy metal, but there was obviously quite a movement in the rest of Europe as well,” Downing notes. “I suppose nobody ever said it was a new wave of European metal, so [Accept] got left out of that. All of the other bands—Saxon, Def Leppard, [Iron] Maiden—they got the benefit of all of that publicity.”
Hoffmann recalls in Germany back then, “there wasn’t any metal scene really. It wasn’t even called heavy metal quite yet. It was still rock in those days, and the normal German other bands that we knew of, there was a lot of krautrock, those kind of fusion [groups]. There were a lot of bands that were influenced by Genesis back in those days—heavy keyboards and long songs. It was quite different. We always wanted to be heavy, heavy, heavy. I guess we were probably the first heavy metal band out of Germany.”
Dueling Guitars, and Tour Perspectives
The high-profile 1981 support slot for Priest was the first professional tour for Accept. “You have to imagine we were just little kids with big eyes watching our heroes every night from the side of the stage and just learning how they do things,” Hoffmann says. “’Oh my god, look at this. Look at that. This is how they do it.’ We were basically super young, hardly any experience. We’d never been on a tour bus and never been to England. So it was a first in so many respects and so many aspects, and we learned a lot really. We watched them all the time. Those guys were our heroes in a lot of ways.”
Downing and Priest, on the other hand, were getting revved-up as they had been spurred on by the breakthrough success of their sixth studio album from 1980, British Steel. In ‘81, they were promoting the more commercial Point of Entry release.
“It was a great tour,” Downing recollects. “I remember it was pretty extensive. I know we did the UK, then we went into Germany. We had a lot of fun on that too. We had a lot of laughs. It was all very promiscuous back then, wasn’t it, in rock and roll? It was just embryonic, it was still emerging and growing. It was all parties and girls and metal, really. It was the good times.”
Keeping the Faith
Both K.K.’s Priest and Accept still rock the house, with Downing and Hoffmann performing their signature stage moves and their respective vocalists still sounding great. Tim “Ripper” Owens fronted Judas Priest between 1996 and 2003, and he has kept active in different bands since, including Iced Earth, Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force, and Spirits of Fire. His screams are still potent. Accept’s Mark Tornillo, who formerly fronted T.T. Quick and joined the German band in 2009, is (amazingly) 70 and also brings it live. He’s still a ball of energy.
“We’re still one of the very, very few bands that still play in regular tuning,” Hoffmann declares. “As you know, over the years, when singers can’t hit the notes that well anymore you start tuning down your guitars. It goes from E to E-flat to D, and all of a sudden the songs sound completely different. We don’t do that, and Mark’s voice has held up pretty well. It sounds really fantastic. He’s not a spring chicken anymore, but he’s going strong.” Tornillo’s secret? “He likes his beer,” Hoffmann quips.
Perhaps the secret to this metal fountain of youth just comes from personal perspective.
“We never see ourselves or feel of ourselves as being old men, and so you just keep going through your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s,” Downing explains. “It’s still, to us, a young music. Age doesn’t come into it, you know? You don’t think, ‘Oh, that’s an old song.’ You just think you’ve been reborn again through your music every time you write a new song.”
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Photo by Elsie Roymans/Getty Images
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