Band:	Accept
Album:	Restless And Wild
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	October 04, 1982
Guest review by:	Valentin B

01. Fast As A Shark
02. Restless And Wild
03. Ahead Of The Pack
04. Shake Your Heads
05. Neon Nights
06. Get Ready
07. Demon's Night
08. Flash Rockin' Man
09. Don't Go Stealing My Soul Away
10. Princess Of The Dawn

Accept are back after their 1981 release Breaker, this time with a far more mature and highly influential album. It is an undeniable classic, although slightly flawed when viewed as a whole, something which I will explain later. The sound you should expect here would be a typical 80s production: prominent guitars and vocals; difficult to hear bass; a few samples; and some quirky, stringent, clean-electric and acoustic guitar passages here and there.

The intro of the first track on Restless and Wild is as cheesy as it is memorable once you've heard it. After Udo makes it clear we are actually listening to a metal record, the speakers and brains alike explode when the heaviest, catchiest, fastest, most over the top song Accept ever wrote begins its assault on the eardrums. I'm talking about the infamous "Fast as a Shark." It features a great sing-along chorus, horrifically heavy riffs, drum work that screams Thrash Metal in a time before Lars Ulrich even knew how to play drums (wait, that didn't sound right) and a blistering solo that will continue leaving boots up people's asses and jaws on the floor for the foreseeable future.

The momentum mostly keeps up in the title track, which features some galloping riffs but slows down the tempo a bit. Unfortunately for the whole feel of the album, the bar was set impossibly high with the first track, and there are few albums that can maintain such great quality from start to finish. Fortunately we have the dramatic ballad "Neon Nights" that saves the mood while showcasing maturity in songwriting, after which the fury of "Demon's Night" and cheesy aesthetics of "Flash Rockin' Man" get things back on track somewhat.

A short dip in the treacherous waters of Arena Rock later, the album faces its inevitable end, which comes in the form of the epic "Princess of the Dawn." This is where the band's musical growth can be heard most evidently. They throw aside for a while the 3 minute rockers with laughable lyrics and focus on a journey through typically 80s dark fantasy territory, with great success. The rhythm flows uninterrupted through 6 minutes and 16 seconds of top notch mid-paced heavy metal and through many a passage that have become, over the years, excellent live fist-pumping and sing-along material, ending the album almost on the same high note that it started on.

Just like the year before, Accept shows with their 4th album that when they step on the gas pedal and crank the distortion to dangerously high levels, they know what they're doing. It is also evident that they were experimenting with a more eclectic, epic side to their sound, a trend that would not follow in the years to come, unfortunately. This makes the album stand out in the 80s discography of the band as an adventurous and mature release that kick started their 3-year long 80s golden age.