Thunderball＜限定盤/Red Vinyl＞

Upon the final demise of German metal legends Accept in 1998, the man who was its voice, the unmistakably shrill Udo Dirkschneider, pretty much stepped into the breach with his self-named band U.D.O. and sought to carry on with a sound and style that, like a saber-toothed cat of some sort, remains frozen in time. Not that what worked in 1984 will necessarily work in 2004 -- but most U.D.O. fans also happen to be semi-frosted relics (sorry!) from the same time period, Thunderball's carefully orchestrated nostalgia pieces may prove to be just what the doctor ordered. Truly, later day Accept rarely sounded as authentically '80s as Thunderball's title cut and subsequent offerings "Fistful of Anger," "Hell Bites Back" and "Tough Luck II" -- all of them packed with precisely jagged guitar riffs, thundering gang-choruses, and of course Dirkschneider's vocal power-drill slicing everything to tatters. The co-songwriting presence on all of these tracks of original Accept drummer, now guitarist Stefan Kaufmann (the man responsible for many of their greatest hits of yore) is of course crucial to their remarkable time-erasing accomplishments, and its fair to assume that the absolutely incredible "Pull the Trigger" is guaranteed to have everyone's Balls to the Wall. Now, for those who have had enough of the Accept comparisons, let it be known that not every track here sounds like a carbon copy of another band's gimmick. Slower selections such as "The Land of the Midnight Sun" and "The Magic Mirror" aren't nearly as obvious; the string-laden power ballad "Blind Eyes" rips off Demon's "Into the Nightmare" instead; and the hilariously absurd polka-metal of "Trainride in Russia" is certainly unique -- ridiculous, but unique. All in all, and easy comparisons notwithstanding, Thunderball's not a bad Accept -- I mean U.D.O. -- album at all. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia