Accept – Forum, London – 27th November 2014

voodoo sixFirst up tonight were British band Voodoo Six.  It’s not long since their singer quit the band due to health reasons, and as the band haven’t had time to find a permanent replacement, tonight’s gig is performed with a stand in singer, Nik Taylor Stoakes from Fire Red Empress.
Voodoo six are normally great live, but I was curious to see how they’d do with a temporary singer.  I needn’t have worried as he did a superb job and looked completely at home as part of the band.  All the band are good at moving around the stage and putting in a good visual performance as well as playing well, and Nik was no exception.

A great set from Voodoo Six – let’s hope they find a permanent singer soon and get back to full time gigging.

Voodoo six setlist:

Falling knives
All that glitters
Stop
Take the blame
Your way
Lead me on
Sink or swim
Something for you
Long way from home

acceptNext up was German heavy metal legends, Accept.  After a long split, the band reformed a few years ago with a new singer, Mark Tornillo, and have recently released their third album with him – Blind Rage.  The band are son confident about the strength of the new era material that it makes up a large part of the set – just over half the songs tonight come from the three most recent albums, with the rest being made up of classic hits and fan favourites from the early years. It’s nice to see a band plays such a good mix – some bands rely far too strongly on the old stuff (Motörhead or UFO for instance who keep the setlist mostly the same every tour), and some go to the opposite extreme and play their latest album and ignore the fan favourites (iron maiden on their matter of life and death tour for example).
Accept are one of those bands whose performance is easy to predict – you know before the gig that they’re going to put in a superb performance that makes things look easy.  That’s not to say they’re boring – far from it, but it’s more that they are so professional that they never deliver anything less than a perfect set.  Tonight is no different as they storm through a two hour set.
The band are great fun to watch as they move around the stage, pose in a line as they play, and generally entertain the crowd, but it’s the music that is key and they certainly deliver in that respect.  Mark Tornillo has a great voice and can handle the old Udo era songs just as well as the new songs, and his voice is strong enough to handle a two hour set with ease.

Accept setlist:

Stampede
Stalingrad
Hellfire
200 years
Losers and winners
London leatherboys
Starlight
Dying breed
Final journey
Shadow soldiers
From ashes we rise
Restless and wild
Ahead of the pack
No shelter
Princess of the dawn
Dark side of my heart
Pandemic
Fast as a shark

Encore:
Metal heart
Teutonic terror
Balls to the wall

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About Ant May

I spend half my life at gigs or festivals and the other half writing the reviews and editing photos, and somehow find time for a full time job too. Who needs sleep - I've got coffee.