August 19, 2026 • 26 mins
German heavy metal legends ACCEPT celebrate 50 years with a landmark release, "Teutonic Titans 1976–2026." Wolf Hoffmann joins to discuss the star-studded album, reflect on a half century of riffs, if he considers himself "a Slash or an Izzy," and more!
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More info:
https://www.acceptworldwide.com/
https://www.instagram.com/acceptworldwide/
Our website:
www.afdpod.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Maybe personality wise, I'm more like easy stradling because I'm
not Hey, check me out, guitar hero.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome to the podcast. Oh yeah, the sneeze.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Well maybe not well maybe later then, sorry, dunker.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I don't think I've ever said gazintite to an actual
German because it was something I prefer to say, bless you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Maybe I'll just keep this in yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Just let's do it in German. I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, I wish I'm part of Austrian so I don't.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, I see they don't already speak German in Austria.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I know they don't, but I'm like, that's the closest
I can get. That's so that's my saying. I can't. Yeah,
I was gonna I could say I went to Hebrew
School and we got everything, but that's really not German.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So I know that's yeah. But there's a lot of
same words in Yiddish, isn't there there's a lot of German.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, probably, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, I mean I can understand every twentieth word or so.
There's certain words that pop up that go like, oh, yeah,
that's what it sounds interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I struggle enough with English you know, I admire you
and those of you. I have people who listen to
this podcast that are bilingual, trilingual, and yeah, it takes
a certain brain. And luckily I survived Spanish and French
my academic life, and that's it, all liquid, you know,
(01:32):
came out of my ears. I wish I could retain
that same thing with the wow want to start the
episode of five hundred and seventy five. That's all thrown
off by his knees. I appreciate I could re record this,
but I'm not going to. It's Brando. Welcome to the podcast,
mister wolf Hoffman. How are you, sir?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
And I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. I'm doing great.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You need to get tissue. How do I say tissue
in German?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh? God, Tashian too, Tashian goulash. I feel like that's
that thing.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh there you go. That's two.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, the ddition and speaking of you know, being Jewish,
that's certainly that the fleme in the throat. But yeah,
otherwise I just feel like I'm just making fun of it,
which I don't want to do.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
You know, I don't want to it of course, so.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Many way I digress. Last time you were on a
couple of years ago. You were promoting the new album Humanoid.
We spoke of artificial intelligence, appetite for destruction. But there's
so much more to talk about this time around. I mean,
it's fifty years in and you were so incredibly busy,
and fifty is the big number. So Teutonical Titans, the
(02:38):
new album, half a century of heavy metal. I mean,
how does that? How does that resonate? Is that something
that when you first said okay, wow, seventy six when
you started, When when did it hit you? In this year,
last year? Just fifty years, half a century? I can't
say it.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I can be going on and on. How does that feel?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, dude, it's a weird experience in a way because
in my brain I knew fifty years was coming up,
like these last few years. I thought, oh god, pretty
soon it's going to be almost, you know, fifty years,
and then one day it's here and you think, like,
that's amazing. I mean, you would never it's in my
(03:21):
mind it's just been a few years that we started.
I mean, fifty years sounds incredibly long, and it's like
it's like a lifetime, you know, But in my mind
it hasn't been that long. It's crazy, but I know
it's true, So we're not making this up. It's actually
it has been half a century, and I don't think
(03:41):
it actually has sunken in until just now. I'm still
processing it because when I see the final product now
and I need to see all the names and all
the people that contributed to it, It's like, Wow, it
really happened. It's really true. It's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's pretty special.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So it's coming out with the greatest hits, your tour
with the greatest hits, and a re record, and you
talk about some of the guests that you have on
there for the rerecords. I mean, my goodness, you know,
surviving members of Pantera, phil On Selmo and Rex Brown,
phil as On Fast as a Shark, rexes On Balls
to the Wall, Kirk Hammett mckeyde Rob Halford singing Balls
to the Wall, Matthias Yobs. I mean, this is just
(04:23):
absolutely incredible. So obviously being around fifty years and you're
just being as affable as you are. I mean, you've
made many a friend over the fifty years. Who how
did you go through your roll decks and decide who
fit what song? And were there people that you could
have gone maybe didn't work out for scheduled reasons, Like
how did you come to these guys?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Well, it grew from I mean, of course, having been
in the business for some time, you have a number
of phone numbers and people that you've worked with before,
like for Phil and Selmo had jumped on stage with
us one years ago at a festival in Europe, so
I knew he had told me that he is an
accept fan. And I've heard from many other people along
(05:09):
the way kind of a similar version of the same
story again and again that they when they listened to
Fast as a Shark or the album Rest Is in Wild,
you know, it inspired them to become musicians and it
and a lot of people say Fast as a Shark
was the first speed metal song in history, and the
whole speed metal genre was kind of based on it
(05:33):
to a certain degree. So that's that's something that you know,
or that I knew, But I had no idea how
many people would actually be okay with re recording some
of these songs together with us, you know, And that
really surprised the hell out of me that hardly nobody,
hardly nobody said no, And If so, it's only because
(05:56):
they would have said, listen, it's a huge honor that
you asked. But I never do these things. It's just
not my cup of tea. You know. Some people never
do a part of these projects, and that's that's something
you have to respect. But I mean, this was out
of all these there was a less than a handful
of people, but that was the case. Almost everybody else
(06:16):
said yes. And I don't think it's because they personally
know me or like me e so much. I think
it's really out of respect for what the song has
meant or the music has meant to the people. And
that is We're very fortunate in the way that we
influenced without us realizing at the time that we influenced
(06:38):
so many other musicians with our early records, you know,
and this is something that's I'm still learning about.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
You know. Obviously the recording process has changed time in
a time and again, so it must be very different.
Like when you're recording Balls to the Wall for this
this example, you know, when you at this time around,
how are you doing it? Are you in the studio
with Rob and Matthias or are you getting parts from them?
And we're you know, in days of post COVID, we're
(07:10):
just kind of production pieces and that's just how it works.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, that's just how it works. And logistically there was
no way we could have done it any other way.
You know, you have to understand that just about every
guitar player has a recording set up at his house,
every bass player usually and even some drummers had their
own studio, but sometimes they know somebody locally that they'd
(07:35):
work with and wherever they live, and so it was
just the easiest for everybody involved to use their facilities
and then they would send the tracks to us and
our producer Zeus then had to do the miracle of
putting it and piecing it all together and making it
sound like it was recorded together. And he did an
(07:57):
amazing job with everybody sent in their parts individually from
wherever they recorded.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
You know, you can't tell you certainly it sounds like
you're all in the studio. It's just knowing your thing nowadays.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
That was the idea, But I mean the travel, we
had to wait for a lot of people to you know,
because everybody was touring during the summer months, like right
from the Pantera guys. We had to wait for like
eight months, and the same with Metallica. That took a
long time until you know, people said yes initially right away,
but then of course you have to you know, wait
(08:28):
until they're ready to actually do it.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And that's yeah, that's something that's always hard for me
to be honest with you. You know, when I and
someone agrees to an interview and be like, okay, cool,
then I'll keep following up, you know, every now and
then I'm like, am.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I bothering you?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
You said yes?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Like did I say something wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
I do?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And I had the same thing. I had the same thing.
You don't want to ask too many times, you know,
because you don't want to like be a pest and
then that people go like, ah, delete, you know, but eventually,
so you have to be persistent without being a pain
in the ass. I guess I don't know how. That's
no secret to any of this. He use your own judgment.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Well, you made me feel better because that's fifty years
versus I have twenty plus years in radio. But the
same mindset of being like, you know, yeah, I asked,
and so it's comforting. I like talking to people I
feel more accomplished than me feel the same as me.
It's part of why I do this podcast, and maybe
the rewind you talking about fifty. I can't help it,
(09:29):
think because I'm a dad now it's I don't know.
My listeners tend to love it.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I don't know. Some of them are annoyed.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Me talking about my kid even though he's not here.
But I think about three years old. He's long hair,
he looks like one of the Nelson brothers. You know,
we took him to Paul McCartney. We took him the
guns of roses, you know, headphones. He slept half you know,
if not most of the time. But I couldn't help
but think when I'm researching this interview, you know you
(09:55):
joined except when you were like seventeen.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Sixteen, sixteen. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, so it's to think like in thirteen years he could.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
I mean, I don't know if I have anything to
say about he's not joining a German metal band, but
I mean, how did that happen at sixteen? I can't
even fathom my son, like, you know, in a fantasy
world doing that.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Do you think back?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Do you still feel like many ways that sixteen year
old kid? And how did your parents react?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oh? Man. Yeah, that's a whole nother story in itself.
Like it's my parents weren't supportive at all. They kind
of tolerated what I was doing. They were all like academics,
you know, education is everything. You got to go get
a proper job. And my mom wanted me to be
an engineer. And you know, my father was a chemistry professor.
(10:43):
So there was very little rock and roll in.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Our house, to tell you the truth, Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
But I think I used metal and making music with
friends and having long hair. That was sort of my
rebellion against the establishment. I never wanted to be what
everybody wanted me to be, you know. I wanted to
have my own life and my chance to break out
of this sort of confinement of rules and regulations and
(11:08):
germanness and like proper education was like, you know, making
music with guys, and you know, it was understood back
then that when you make heavy and loud music and
you have long hair and leather jackets, you're you're on purpose.
You want to you want to be outside of society,
and you want to make music that you're fair that
(11:29):
your parents hate. You know, that was the mindset back then,
And now it's my God, it's completely changed. And now
my parents, if there were still alive, they would probably
now they go to medal concerts people of that age,
you know, But back then it was just a young
man's game and unthinkable. So it Yeah, but like I said,
(11:55):
as being sixteen year old, I mean I played guitar
at that time, maybe for three four years, and probably
not very well, but just well enough to pass the audition,
I guess. And then the rest is just making baby
steps together, you know, fifty.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Years of baby steps, fifty years.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
I mean, that's really what it is a career is.
I mean, we didn't unless you're like the Beatles and
you have this amazing breakthrough and your world favous, overnight
sensation like that happens, But it never happened for us.
It was a gradual building and learning, making mistakes and
you know, just keeping going.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Would that be the advice you have? Obviously it's a
much different world now. But yeah, who lo's, for lack
of a better term, a survivor of this industry, a
very tough industry music, and you know, you see acts
come and go more than you more than you know,
as many stars as there are in the sky. These acts,
(12:56):
but you're you're surviving and thriving and putting out great music.
So is there any sort of like if you had,
you know, like an advice, Yeah, what advice would you would?
I mean, you're you're kind of giving it as we're talking,
but I don't know if you have a motto or creed.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's hard for me because the world has changed so much.
I don't really know what the rules are nowadays. If
you're a beginning musician, it's all about followers and social media,
and that's not my home turf. Man. I'm barely stumbling
through that new landscape myself with all you know you
haven't you know, you have to make posts and this
(13:33):
is not This doesn't feel familiar or like comfortable to me.
I do it because I know I have to, because
everybody does it, and it's this sort of pressure to
keep relevant. But I would say, from where I come
from and how it was back then, persistence always wins
over talent for me, because I know I've met a
(13:55):
lot of really talented people along the way that don't
go anywhere just because they don't have the right I mean,
always there's luck involved, but at the end of the day,
What really brings you further along is like persistence and
the I guess the tenacity of like staying in the
(14:17):
game and doing what you're what do you think you
should be doing? That always pays off in the end
in my experience, this is.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
This is good.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
I alwaysn't expecting this kind of conversation, but I relate
to that as well. You know, I'm going to be
forty three in like a month, Jesus right, and I
this whole podcasting posts. That's not the world I initially
came from.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
It was radio.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I didn't sign up for any of this, you know,
I was a sixteen year old. I didn't want to
do posts and have followers and all that. You know,
I just want to play guitar and to a certain
amount of I still want to just be a musician
sometimes and just you know, let me just go play
my songs and leave me the fuck alone with everything else.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Right on their times, I just want to talk to
you know, talk to Wolf Hoffman and leave it be.
But then I you know, I enjoy making part of it,
post about it. But there's the you have to make
posts about it. You have to make smaller eclips of it.
You have to do about like just let me alone,
Like let me just.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Do the radio part, the part that I love. So
I completely I completely cannot.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It doesn't work like that anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Man.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
It's just new worlds. It's a new world and new rules,
and we all have to find our way through it,
and we do. We do it really well. But it's
not something like you said. It's not something that we
grew up with, something we could have anticipated back then
when we got into the game.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
That's why I refuse being labeled as a millennial, even
though they cut off, because I remember a world without
cell phones, without home computers, without remote controls on TVs.
I so I'm with you, even though I'm not as
seasoned a veteran as you are.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I'm with you. That's that's sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The phrase I wanted to choose, I want to say older,
but now I said it and ruined it.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
You can say, you can say I'm old. That's okay.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Look there's I have I have so many you don't.
I'm glad you don't see it on the camera. I
look in I have so many grays in my beard
when I look in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So, let's live in the past. A little bit more
before we go into the future. We talk about more
of the new album coming out the September September fourth,
four days before my birthday.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So last time you spoke about obviously.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Going to Roses, it's Appetite with Distortion. It's the theme
podcast and I do the six Degrees of gn R
Bacon and you said the first time you heard Appetite
for Destruction was the courtesy of Mark Weiss, the hographer.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's right, it is correct.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, yeah, So that was a very cool story. So
if people want to go back and listen to that,
I actually made a short clip of it of that
as well. People want to check that out. But something
I want to start asking my guests because Appetite gets
all the praise that it deserves. But at the time
you your illusion came out one ninety two, that era
of it was an interesting era for accept So I'm
(17:07):
just curious. We're you know, fan versus a professional view.
You know, I mean I was too young to really
live it, but obviously I know all about the the
excess and all about the the excitement, the midnight lineups.
I mean it any with that on your radar at all,
I'll use your use your illusion one and two and.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Not so much. No, I mean, but that's because not
a lot of other musicians are my radar or a
lot of I don't really pay that much attention to
what's going on in the world musically because I'm so
in my own bubble that I'm usually just sort of
couldn't be bothered checking everybody else out. And of course
(17:49):
sometimes you come across stuff and you can't help it.
You get exposed to it here or there or during festivals,
but in general, I'm not the guy who knows about
all these things, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, that's kind of the answer was I was kind
of hoping for in a weird way because it kind
of shows I think sometimes to the fans where it's like, yeah,
it's your entire world, But there are a lot of
little worlds in.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
This There's so much going on in the music world
that I have don't have a clue about, man, and
that's part of that is normal, because you can't know everything.
But at the same time, I'm special. I'm a recluse.
I don't really look too much outside of my little world.
And you know, except I grew up with a certain
(18:33):
amount of classic metal bands, you know, Judas Breeze and
Deep Purple and Ozzie Osbourne and like, you know, a
bunch of other bands, of course, And that was I'm
very much on my radar growing up. But at a
certain point I got immerged into my own accept world.
We created our own songs, and I didn't really stopped
(18:54):
sort of following or like paying that much attention, especially
during the nineties. And since you said ninety two, that
was a weird time for us, and I think almost
any traditional metal band went through some Yeah, I mean
the dark nineties. It's a period that I don't like
(19:15):
thinking back to so much because I just see it
as a as a reductive black plot. I mean, it's
just the nineties to me. The nineties never happened.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
It's yeah, okay, it's made.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, it was a weird time, man, And then the
vibe and the band got weird during that time, and
that's when we broke up eventually, because I personally had
the feeling that heavy metal had its time and that
time was gone. You know, I thought, Okay, this is
now all about in a grunge and other styles of music,
(19:57):
and after that, maybe something else will come along and
people will sort of forget about the stuff that we
did in the eighties. You know, that was my my belief.
But boy was I wrong?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Well yeah, I mean because grunge was just a period
of time that I lived through. I mean, there are
influence countless you know that that was really my That's
the interesting thing why I do with gn R themed
podcast because I really grew up in the grunge era.
You know, appetite came out when I was four. So
but here we are again, fifty years later, you know,
(20:30):
talking about except I guess one more just to feed
my feed my appetite for you know, a good term there?
Do you consider because you've you've displayed both in my
fantasy world of traits of isy, straddling and slash, and
you like, do you feel like you relate if you
could might again appease my appetite? You relate to more
(20:52):
than one and the other because is he's more reserved,
but he writes a lot slashes out front, you're out front.
I don't know if you've ever you know, I'm sure
that's never really crossed your mind, but I guess we
want to know.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I've never even thought of it that way. But I
can tell you that that I've always admired slash melodical
work a lot, you know. I mean, he's got a
lot of solos that you can sing note for note,
you know, just because you've heard him so many times.
But they're also very memorable and like logical in their
structure and such. It's just not from what I know,
(21:28):
A lot of it is just it's not random noodling.
It's just like thought out melodies, and that's what I'm about. Also,
you know, I try to write melodic parts and solos
that are part of the song and that it became
become part of the song that you can memorize, and
that's what he did. And maybe personality wise, I'm more
(21:49):
like easy straddlin, you know, because I'm not I don't know,
I'm not the sort of the hey check me out
guitar hero kind of thing, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I do I do again? It was my question, That's
my silliness of it. It's not a question I'm asking myself.
You know, I thought of at forty three, but when
I became a fan of the band, and when you
become fans of any band, when you're at sixteen. You
how do you relate to these characters in addition to
liking their music? And you you know you hear that
all the time with kiss how do you relate you know,
(22:20):
the character.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Of it all.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So that was just a question. I appreciate you entertaining
it with. I thought out, yeah, sure, thank you for that.
So let's let's bring it around. So what was the
fort I will admit this fourth wall. I don't think
I've ever seen teutonical or Teutonic actually spelled, so I
had to like look it up and be like, is
(22:42):
that the Toonic? I was like, okay, I almost like
I say things wrong all the time, but let me
try here. So what was the the inspiration for naming
it Teutonic Titans?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And well, we have a song called Teutonic Terror, and
you know, Germans, all of this sometimes called teuton teuton
Titans in German, you know, but it's just I guess
it's one of those early Germanic tribes and a lot
of Germans are still called, you know, Teutonic. I don't know, Okay,
it's just a play on words at the end of
(23:14):
the day, just.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Like the literation of it all, you know, t.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
T Yeah, yeah, there you go. But you know, we
also had Teutonic Terror that that's that's a popular song
of ours on the Blood of the Nation, so that
that's kind of why.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You did also okay, okay, I didn't know if there
was any sort of other deeper meaning, but that that's
that's cool. Was there a favorite just to bounce off?
Where were talked about earlier about rips and singing along anything.
What were you most looking forward to re recording and
putting on this greatest hits? Like, what's the what are
you looking for for fans? What are you most excited
(23:51):
for fans to experience when the album comes out on
the September fourth.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I mean, it's such a variety. I would say about
half the album is like the stuff that you might expect,
and the other half is sort of deep cuts And
that was to me, that was a lot of fun
to record songs Let's Save Us or Love Child or
some of the other songs that we haven't played so
much and that we haven't listened to so much to
(24:21):
go back to, or like Demon's Night and stuff like that.
That's like not the song that everybody would expect, So
it's fun to hear those songs interpreted by other people,
you know, and yeah, there's a whole variety on this album,
(24:41):
so I would wouldn't really, I can't really say one
song sticks out so much. You know, they all like
work together really well. Right, that was the lame answer,
wasn't it Was that a lame answer.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
No, not at all of anything. It was the name
question by me.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
So when you can go to accept Worldwide dot Com
and get to Tonic Titans pre order it and what's
the latest, I guess with the anniversary tour, I hope
there's a sixtieth and seventieth anniversary tour so I can
take my young Harrison to.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yes, please, yes, please. Well, we're currently doing festival shows
all over Europe and slowly but surely winding down. We're
going to the UK and for two weeks to play
a few shows there, and then we'll come back for
a headline tour in all over Europe in November and December,
and hopefully next year we can be in the US
(25:36):
again and maybe South America. Japan is still on the horizon,
so we've got a lot more markets that we need
to hit with this fifty anniversary tour. You know, no,
technically it only happens this year, but we might go
to other markets and say, hey, we couldn't all fit
it into one year, so here we are.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
You know, awesome, because, as I mentioned, my son's already
been to shows. His first was we started him out easy,
or should say my wife started him out easy with
Dave Matthews like, oh yeah, I like five months, so
I don't know. Maybe I'll see you somewhere in the
US next year with my four year old.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So yes, please, yes, please.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Well it was an honor. I really enjoy talking to you,
and I hope we get to do this again.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yes, please, honor was mine. Man, it was fun, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
So that does it for this episode of Appetite for Distortion.
When will you see the next one? Well, in the
words of AXL Rose concerning Chinese democracy, I don't know
as soon as the word, but you'll see.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It thanks to the lame ass security. I'm going home.
Maybe personality wise, I'm more like easy stradling because I'm
not Hey, check me out, guitar hero.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome to the podcast. Oh yeah, the sneeze.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Well maybe not well maybe later then, sorry, dunker.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I don't think I've ever said gazintite to an actual
German because it was something I prefer to say, bless you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Maybe I'll just keep this in yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Just let's do it in German. I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, I wish I'm part of Austrian so I don't.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, I see they don't already speak German in Austria.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I know they don't, but I'm like, that's the closest
I can get. That's so that's my saying. I can't. Yeah,
I was gonna I could say I went to Hebrew
School and we got everything, but that's really not German.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So I know that's yeah. But there's a lot of
same words in Yiddish, isn't there there's a lot of German.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, probably, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, I mean I can understand every twentieth word or so.
There's certain words that pop up that go like, oh, yeah,
that's what it sounds interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I struggle enough with English you know, I admire you
and those of you. I have people who listen to
this podcast that are bilingual, trilingual, and yeah, it takes
a certain brain. And luckily I survived Spanish and French
my academic life, and that's it, all liquid, you know,
(01:32):
came out of my ears. I wish I could retain
that same thing with the wow want to start the
episode of five hundred and seventy five. That's all thrown
off by his knees. I appreciate I could re record this,
but I'm not going to. It's Brando. Welcome to the podcast,
mister wolf Hoffman. How are you, sir?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
And I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. I'm doing great.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You need to get tissue. How do I say tissue
in German?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh? God, Tashian too, Tashian goulash. I feel like that's
that thing.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh there you go. That's two.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, the ddition and speaking of you know, being Jewish,
that's certainly that the fleme in the throat. But yeah,
otherwise I just feel like I'm just making fun of it,
which I don't want to do.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
You know, I don't want to it of course, so.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Many way I digress. Last time you were on a
couple of years ago. You were promoting the new album Humanoid.
We spoke of artificial intelligence, appetite for destruction. But there's
so much more to talk about this time around. I mean,
it's fifty years in and you were so incredibly busy,
and fifty is the big number. So Teutonical Titans, the
(02:38):
new album, half a century of heavy metal. I mean,
how does that? How does that resonate? Is that something
that when you first said okay, wow, seventy six when
you started, When when did it hit you? In this year,
last year? Just fifty years, half a century? I can't
say it.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I can be going on and on. How does that feel?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, dude, it's a weird experience in a way because
in my brain I knew fifty years was coming up,
like these last few years. I thought, oh god, pretty
soon it's going to be almost, you know, fifty years,
and then one day it's here and you think, like,
that's amazing. I mean, you would never it's in my
(03:21):
mind it's just been a few years that we started.
I mean, fifty years sounds incredibly long, and it's like
it's like a lifetime, you know, But in my mind
it hasn't been that long. It's crazy, but I know
it's true, So we're not making this up. It's actually
it has been half a century, and I don't think
(03:41):
it actually has sunken in until just now. I'm still
processing it because when I see the final product now
and I need to see all the names and all
the people that contributed to it, It's like, Wow, it
really happened. It's really true. It's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's pretty special.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So it's coming out with the greatest hits, your tour
with the greatest hits, and a re record, and you
talk about some of the guests that you have on
there for the rerecords. I mean, my goodness, you know,
surviving members of Pantera, phil On Selmo and Rex Brown,
phil as On Fast as a Shark, rexes On Balls
to the Wall, Kirk Hammett mckeyde Rob Halford singing Balls
to the Wall, Matthias Yobs. I mean, this is just
(04:23):
absolutely incredible. So obviously being around fifty years and you're
just being as affable as you are. I mean, you've
made many a friend over the fifty years. Who how
did you go through your roll decks and decide who
fit what song? And were there people that you could
have gone maybe didn't work out for scheduled reasons, Like
how did you come to these guys?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Well, it grew from I mean, of course, having been
in the business for some time, you have a number
of phone numbers and people that you've worked with before,
like for Phil and Selmo had jumped on stage with
us one years ago at a festival in Europe, so
I knew he had told me that he is an
accept fan. And I've heard from many other people along
(05:09):
the way kind of a similar version of the same
story again and again that they when they listened to
Fast as a Shark or the album Rest Is in Wild,
you know, it inspired them to become musicians and it
and a lot of people say Fast as a Shark
was the first speed metal song in history, and the
whole speed metal genre was kind of based on it
(05:33):
to a certain degree. So that's that's something that you know,
or that I knew, But I had no idea how
many people would actually be okay with re recording some
of these songs together with us, you know, And that
really surprised the hell out of me that hardly nobody,
hardly nobody said no, And If so, it's only because
(05:56):
they would have said, listen, it's a huge honor that
you asked. But I never do these things. It's just
not my cup of tea. You know. Some people never
do a part of these projects, and that's that's something
you have to respect. But I mean, this was out
of all these there was a less than a handful
of people, but that was the case. Almost everybody else
(06:16):
said yes. And I don't think it's because they personally
know me or like me e so much. I think
it's really out of respect for what the song has
meant or the music has meant to the people. And
that is We're very fortunate in the way that we
influenced without us realizing at the time that we influenced
(06:38):
so many other musicians with our early records, you know,
and this is something that's I'm still learning about.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
You know. Obviously the recording process has changed time in
a time and again, so it must be very different.
Like when you're recording Balls to the Wall for this
this example, you know, when you at this time around,
how are you doing it? Are you in the studio
with Rob and Matthias or are you getting parts from them?
And we're you know, in days of post COVID, we're
(07:10):
just kind of production pieces and that's just how it works.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, that's just how it works. And logistically there was
no way we could have done it any other way.
You know, you have to understand that just about every
guitar player has a recording set up at his house,
every bass player usually and even some drummers had their
own studio, but sometimes they know somebody locally that they'd
(07:35):
work with and wherever they live, and so it was
just the easiest for everybody involved to use their facilities
and then they would send the tracks to us and
our producer Zeus then had to do the miracle of
putting it and piecing it all together and making it
sound like it was recorded together. And he did an
(07:57):
amazing job with everybody sent in their parts individually from
wherever they recorded.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
You know, you can't tell you certainly it sounds like
you're all in the studio. It's just knowing your thing nowadays.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
That was the idea, But I mean the travel, we
had to wait for a lot of people to you know,
because everybody was touring during the summer months, like right
from the Pantera guys. We had to wait for like
eight months, and the same with Metallica. That took a
long time until you know, people said yes initially right away,
but then of course you have to you know, wait
(08:28):
until they're ready to actually do it.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And that's yeah, that's something that's always hard for me
to be honest with you. You know, when I and
someone agrees to an interview and be like, okay, cool,
then I'll keep following up, you know, every now and
then I'm like, am.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I bothering you?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
You said yes?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Like did I say something wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
I do?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And I had the same thing. I had the same thing.
You don't want to ask too many times, you know,
because you don't want to like be a pest and
then that people go like, ah, delete, you know, but eventually,
so you have to be persistent without being a pain
in the ass. I guess I don't know how. That's
no secret to any of this. He use your own judgment.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Well, you made me feel better because that's fifty years
versus I have twenty plus years in radio. But the
same mindset of being like, you know, yeah, I asked,
and so it's comforting. I like talking to people I
feel more accomplished than me feel the same as me.
It's part of why I do this podcast, and maybe
the rewind you talking about fifty. I can't help it,
(09:29):
think because I'm a dad now it's I don't know.
My listeners tend to love it.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I don't know. Some of them are annoyed.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Me talking about my kid even though he's not here.
But I think about three years old. He's long hair,
he looks like one of the Nelson brothers. You know,
we took him to Paul McCartney. We took him the
guns of roses, you know, headphones. He slept half you know,
if not most of the time. But I couldn't help
but think when I'm researching this interview, you know you
(09:55):
joined except when you were like seventeen.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Sixteen, sixteen. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, so it's to think like in thirteen years he could.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
I mean, I don't know if I have anything to
say about he's not joining a German metal band, but
I mean, how did that happen at sixteen? I can't
even fathom my son, like, you know, in a fantasy
world doing that.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Do you think back?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Do you still feel like many ways that sixteen year
old kid? And how did your parents react?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oh? Man. Yeah, that's a whole nother story in itself.
Like it's my parents weren't supportive at all. They kind
of tolerated what I was doing. They were all like academics,
you know, education is everything. You got to go get
a proper job. And my mom wanted me to be
an engineer. And you know, my father was a chemistry professor.
(10:43):
So there was very little rock and roll in.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Our house, to tell you the truth, Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
But I think I used metal and making music with
friends and having long hair. That was sort of my
rebellion against the establishment. I never wanted to be what
everybody wanted me to be, you know. I wanted to
have my own life and my chance to break out
of this sort of confinement of rules and regulations and
(11:08):
germanness and like proper education was like, you know, making
music with guys, and you know, it was understood back
then that when you make heavy and loud music and
you have long hair and leather jackets, you're you're on purpose.
You want to you want to be outside of society,
and you want to make music that you're fair that
(11:29):
your parents hate. You know, that was the mindset back then,
And now it's my God, it's completely changed. And now
my parents, if there were still alive, they would probably
now they go to medal concerts people of that age,
you know, But back then it was just a young
man's game and unthinkable. So it Yeah, but like I said,
(11:55):
as being sixteen year old, I mean I played guitar
at that time, maybe for three four years, and probably
not very well, but just well enough to pass the audition,
I guess. And then the rest is just making baby
steps together, you know, fifty.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Years of baby steps, fifty years.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
I mean, that's really what it is a career is.
I mean, we didn't unless you're like the Beatles and
you have this amazing breakthrough and your world favous, overnight
sensation like that happens, But it never happened for us.
It was a gradual building and learning, making mistakes and
you know, just keeping going.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Would that be the advice you have? Obviously it's a
much different world now. But yeah, who lo's, for lack
of a better term, a survivor of this industry, a
very tough industry music, and you know, you see acts
come and go more than you more than you know,
as many stars as there are in the sky. These acts,
(12:56):
but you're you're surviving and thriving and putting out great music.
So is there any sort of like if you had,
you know, like an advice, Yeah, what advice would you would?
I mean, you're you're kind of giving it as we're talking,
but I don't know if you have a motto or creed.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's hard for me because the world has changed so much.
I don't really know what the rules are nowadays. If
you're a beginning musician, it's all about followers and social media,
and that's not my home turf. Man. I'm barely stumbling
through that new landscape myself with all you know you
haven't you know, you have to make posts and this
(13:33):
is not This doesn't feel familiar or like comfortable to me.
I do it because I know I have to, because
everybody does it, and it's this sort of pressure to
keep relevant. But I would say, from where I come
from and how it was back then, persistence always wins
over talent for me, because I know I've met a
(13:55):
lot of really talented people along the way that don't
go anywhere just because they don't have the right I mean,
always there's luck involved, but at the end of the day,
What really brings you further along is like persistence and
the I guess the tenacity of like staying in the
(14:17):
game and doing what you're what do you think you
should be doing? That always pays off in the end
in my experience, this is.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
This is good.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
I alwaysn't expecting this kind of conversation, but I relate
to that as well. You know, I'm going to be
forty three in like a month, Jesus right, and I
this whole podcasting posts. That's not the world I initially
came from.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
It was radio.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I didn't sign up for any of this, you know,
I was a sixteen year old. I didn't want to
do posts and have followers and all that. You know,
I just want to play guitar and to a certain
amount of I still want to just be a musician
sometimes and just you know, let me just go play
my songs and leave me the fuck alone with everything else.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Right on their times, I just want to talk to
you know, talk to Wolf Hoffman and leave it be.
But then I you know, I enjoy making part of it,
post about it. But there's the you have to make
posts about it. You have to make smaller eclips of it.
You have to do about like just let me alone,
Like let me just.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Do the radio part, the part that I love. So
I completely I completely cannot.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It doesn't work like that anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Man.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
It's just new worlds. It's a new world and new rules,
and we all have to find our way through it,
and we do. We do it really well. But it's
not something like you said. It's not something that we
grew up with, something we could have anticipated back then
when we got into the game.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
That's why I refuse being labeled as a millennial, even
though they cut off, because I remember a world without
cell phones, without home computers, without remote controls on TVs.
I so I'm with you, even though I'm not as
seasoned a veteran as you are.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I'm with you. That's that's sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
The phrase I wanted to choose, I want to say older,
but now I said it and ruined it.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
You can say, you can say I'm old. That's okay.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Look there's I have I have so many you don't.
I'm glad you don't see it on the camera. I
look in I have so many grays in my beard
when I look in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So, let's live in the past. A little bit more
before we go into the future. We talk about more
of the new album coming out the September September fourth,
four days before my birthday.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So last time you spoke about obviously.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Going to Roses, it's Appetite with Distortion. It's the theme
podcast and I do the six Degrees of gn R
Bacon and you said the first time you heard Appetite
for Destruction was the courtesy of Mark Weiss, the hographer.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's right, it is correct.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, yeah, So that was a very cool story. So
if people want to go back and listen to that,
I actually made a short clip of it of that
as well. People want to check that out. But something
I want to start asking my guests because Appetite gets
all the praise that it deserves. But at the time
you your illusion came out one ninety two, that era
of it was an interesting era for accept So I'm
(17:07):
just curious. We're you know, fan versus a professional view.
You know, I mean I was too young to really
live it, but obviously I know all about the the
excess and all about the the excitement, the midnight lineups.
I mean it any with that on your radar at all,
I'll use your use your illusion one and two and.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Not so much. No, I mean, but that's because not
a lot of other musicians are my radar or a
lot of I don't really pay that much attention to
what's going on in the world musically because I'm so
in my own bubble that I'm usually just sort of
couldn't be bothered checking everybody else out. And of course
(17:49):
sometimes you come across stuff and you can't help it.
You get exposed to it here or there or during festivals,
but in general, I'm not the guy who knows about
all these things, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, that's kind of the answer was I was kind
of hoping for in a weird way because it kind
of shows I think sometimes to the fans where it's like, yeah,
it's your entire world, But there are a lot of
little worlds in.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
This There's so much going on in the music world
that I have don't have a clue about, man, and
that's part of that is normal, because you can't know everything.
But at the same time, I'm special. I'm a recluse.
I don't really look too much outside of my little world.
And you know, except I grew up with a certain
(18:33):
amount of classic metal bands, you know, Judas Breeze and
Deep Purple and Ozzie Osbourne and like, you know, a
bunch of other bands, of course, And that was I'm
very much on my radar growing up. But at a
certain point I got immerged into my own accept world.
We created our own songs, and I didn't really stopped
(18:54):
sort of following or like paying that much attention, especially
during the nineties. And since you said ninety two, that
was a weird time for us, and I think almost
any traditional metal band went through some Yeah, I mean
the dark nineties. It's a period that I don't like
(19:15):
thinking back to so much because I just see it
as a as a reductive black plot. I mean, it's
just the nineties to me. The nineties never happened.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
It's yeah, okay, it's made.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, it was a weird time, man, And then the
vibe and the band got weird during that time, and
that's when we broke up eventually, because I personally had
the feeling that heavy metal had its time and that
time was gone. You know, I thought, Okay, this is
now all about in a grunge and other styles of music,
(19:57):
and after that, maybe something else will come along and
people will sort of forget about the stuff that we
did in the eighties. You know, that was my my belief.
But boy was I wrong?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Well yeah, I mean because grunge was just a period
of time that I lived through. I mean, there are
influence countless you know that that was really my That's
the interesting thing why I do with gn R themed
podcast because I really grew up in the grunge era.
You know, appetite came out when I was four. So
but here we are again, fifty years later, you know,
(20:30):
talking about except I guess one more just to feed
my feed my appetite for you know, a good term there?
Do you consider because you've you've displayed both in my
fantasy world of traits of isy, straddling and slash, and
you like, do you feel like you relate if you
could might again appease my appetite? You relate to more
(20:52):
than one and the other because is he's more reserved,
but he writes a lot slashes out front, you're out front.
I don't know if you've ever you know, I'm sure
that's never really crossed your mind, but I guess we
want to know.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I've never even thought of it that way. But I
can tell you that that I've always admired slash melodical
work a lot, you know. I mean, he's got a
lot of solos that you can sing note for note,
you know, just because you've heard him so many times.
But they're also very memorable and like logical in their
structure and such. It's just not from what I know,
(21:28):
A lot of it is just it's not random noodling.
It's just like thought out melodies, and that's what I'm about. Also,
you know, I try to write melodic parts and solos
that are part of the song and that it became
become part of the song that you can memorize, and
that's what he did. And maybe personality wise, I'm more
(21:49):
like easy straddlin, you know, because I'm not I don't know,
I'm not the sort of the hey check me out
guitar hero kind of thing, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I do I do again? It was my question, That's
my silliness of it. It's not a question I'm asking myself.
You know, I thought of at forty three, but when
I became a fan of the band, and when you
become fans of any band, when you're at sixteen. You
how do you relate to these characters in addition to
liking their music? And you you know you hear that
all the time with kiss how do you relate you know,
(22:20):
the character.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Of it all.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So that was just a question. I appreciate you entertaining
it with. I thought out, yeah, sure, thank you for that.
So let's let's bring it around. So what was the
fort I will admit this fourth wall. I don't think
I've ever seen teutonical or Teutonic actually spelled, so I
had to like look it up and be like, is
(22:42):
that the Toonic? I was like, okay, I almost like
I say things wrong all the time, but let me
try here. So what was the the inspiration for naming
it Teutonic Titans?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And well, we have a song called Teutonic Terror, and
you know, Germans, all of this sometimes called teuton teuton
Titans in German, you know, but it's just I guess
it's one of those early Germanic tribes and a lot
of Germans are still called, you know, Teutonic. I don't know, Okay,
it's just a play on words at the end of
(23:14):
the day, just.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Like the literation of it all, you know, t.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
T Yeah, yeah, there you go. But you know, we
also had Teutonic Terror that that's that's a popular song
of ours on the Blood of the Nation, so that
that's kind of why.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You did also okay, okay, I didn't know if there
was any sort of other deeper meaning, but that that's
that's cool. Was there a favorite just to bounce off?
Where were talked about earlier about rips and singing along anything.
What were you most looking forward to re recording and
putting on this greatest hits? Like, what's the what are
you looking for for fans? What are you most excited
(23:51):
for fans to experience when the album comes out on
the September fourth.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I mean, it's such a variety. I would say about
half the album is like the stuff that you might expect,
and the other half is sort of deep cuts And
that was to me, that was a lot of fun
to record songs Let's Save Us or Love Child or
some of the other songs that we haven't played so
much and that we haven't listened to so much to
(24:21):
go back to, or like Demon's Night and stuff like that.
That's like not the song that everybody would expect, So
it's fun to hear those songs interpreted by other people,
you know, and yeah, there's a whole variety on this album,
(24:41):
so I would wouldn't really, I can't really say one
song sticks out so much. You know, they all like
work together really well. Right, that was the lame answer,
wasn't it Was that a lame answer.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
No, not at all of anything. It was the name
question by me.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
So when you can go to accept Worldwide dot Com
and get to Tonic Titans pre order it and what's
the latest, I guess with the anniversary tour, I hope
there's a sixtieth and seventieth anniversary tour so I can
take my young Harrison to.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yes, please, yes, please. Well, we're currently doing festival shows
all over Europe and slowly but surely winding down. We're
going to the UK and for two weeks to play
a few shows there, and then we'll come back for
a headline tour in all over Europe in November and December,
and hopefully next year we can be in the US
(25:36):
again and maybe South America. Japan is still on the horizon,
so we've got a lot more markets that we need
to hit with this fifty anniversary tour. You know, no,
technically it only happens this year, but we might go
to other markets and say, hey, we couldn't all fit
it into one year, so here we are.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
You know, awesome, because, as I mentioned, my son's already
been to shows. His first was we started him out easy,
or should say my wife started him out easy with
Dave Matthews like, oh yeah, I like five months, so
I don't know. Maybe I'll see you somewhere in the
US next year with my four year old.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So yes, please, yes, please.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Well it was an honor. I really enjoy talking to you,
and I hope we get to do this again.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yes, please, honor was mine. Man, it was fun, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
So that does it for this episode of Appetite for Distortion.
When will you see the next one? Well, in the
words of AXL Rose concerning Chinese democracy, I don't know
as soon as the word, but you'll see.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It thanks to the lame ass security. I'm going home.
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