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Too Mean to Die is the sixteenth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released on 29 January 2021. It is the first Accept album to feature Martin Motnik, who replaced original bassist Peter Baltes in 2019, and rhythm guitarist Philip Shouse, who joined the band that same year. Speaking of heavy metal kingpins, when ACCEPT first launched at the end of the 70s, the metal genre didn’t even exist - at first the band could only be labelled with the (quality) seal “crazy loud and crazy wild”. Today we know that this was (and is) metal par excellence. And we also know that ACCEPT opened the door to thrash metal, inspiring giants such as Metallica. Guitarist Kirk Hammett recently stated in the German magazine “Gitarre & Bass”: “Wolf Hoffmann has a huge influence on me.“

Chronological development of popular music from 1960 to 1997, the impact of social change on the text and style of music. Immerse yourself in a nostalgic trip, remember how it was different before. For the older generation it - a memory, a wonderful meeting with the youth and for the young - a unique opportunity to hear music that is virtually nowhere is not sound.

This is an excellent spoof/satire of all things American with a side swipe at impoverished European royalty and the operetta genre to boot. Deborah Riedel is absolutely magnificent both in her acting and her singing. Her intentional horribly bad American accent in German is absolutely hilarious and is exactly the way so many Americans speak German although never so completely and swiftly. Yet when she sings, her German, of course, is impeccable and unaccented for, after all, she is an opera singer and will go only so far to dumb down.

Recordings of Die Meistersinger do not grow on trees; more than any other of Wagner’s operas it almost defines “festival opera”. Its four-hour-plus length is just the start: Sachs is an incredibly long role, and the character is complicated (moreso, say, that Gurnemanz in Parsifal–another endurance contest–who is religiously tunnel-visioned); Walther’s biggest moment comes at the opera’s very end and simply cannot be anything but great; Eva is sweet without being cloying and while the role is lyrical, it’s not easy to pin down dramatically; Beckmesser must be foolish but not grotesque; the orchestra is huge, and if the chorus, orchestra, and soloists get through the first act finale with flying colors, they still have the second act’s, which is a true challenge for any conductor to keep both together and clear.