Heavy metal is alive and well – contrary to what many of the snobby tastemakers may wish to believe. Between the crop of new bands coming out of Europe, North America and South American every day, to veteran metal acts that continue to tour the world and release vibrant, relevant and acclaimed new material, it is a good time to be a metal fan – and a metal artist.
Udo Dirkschneider has been an integral part of the European – indeed the international – metal scene since he fronted the pioneering German metal band Accept’s debut album in 1979. These days, with a veritable treasure trove of a back catalogue from that band, and his more recent and more prolific act, U.D.O., Dirkschneider shows absolutely no indication that he is ready to slow down as a top touring act, or as a vital recording artist.
Proof of this is the recently unleashed new U.D.O. album, Steelfactory, which came out Aug. 31 on AFM Records worldwide. For Dirkschneider, immersing himself in the past, as he has done for much of the past three years as he revisited his Accept back catalogue under the Dirkschneider banner, was fun, but he wants to move onward and upward to new creative horizons. Which is why it was important to write, record and release Steelfactory as soon as possible.
“It’s also important to create new songs and see how everything works and keeps you being creative. For me it’s very important to create new songs and keep writing songs and the go out on tour with the new songs and see how the reaction is with the audience. For me, that’s is very important. The creativity is something that’s inside me. I have these ideas and I want to put them out there. I think you need to keep doing that otherwise you can just stop and say, okay I retire,” he said from his home in St. Petersburg, Russia.
“Music is a way to express myself and say what’s on my mind, especially with the lyrics. If you want to say something that is maybe a little bit more political, or do a little biography of myself, like all the things that I did and have done, that means you have to be creative and say what you need to say. Or you can say, ‘okay we’re just going to go out there and play this old shit.’ But that’s not the way I like to work.”
And it’s proven to be a wonderful way to work, as Dirkschneider, under the U.D.O. brand has been remarkably prolific. The band’s first incarnation was from 1987, when he first left Accept, until 1992, when he rejoined his old band for a short stint. U.D.O. came back again in 1996 and has remained a force on the metal scene even since. Steelfactory is the band’s 16th studio album, and ninth since 2000. The gap between this record and their previous one, Decadent, was three years, which was longer than Dirkschneider would have preferred, but the extensive touring dates of the Dirkschneider branded Back to the Roots – Accepted shows prevented an earlier release.
Factor in the 10 Accept albums that he participated in as a performer and writer from 1979 through to Predator in 1996, and that’s truly an impressive pedigree over a 40-year career.
And one listen to Steelfactory demonstrates that Dirkschneider has not lost any of his passion for music, nor the power of his voice or the pulse-pounding intensity of the music he crafts. It is a masterstroke of classic metal, full of enough melodic hooks to entice the somewhat metallically queasy but infused with thunderous rhythms, churning and roiling guitars and insistent vocal prowess to appease the most ardent of metal purists. It is classic metal at its finest.
It is an album that is also remarkably reflective and personal in tone, as Dirkschneider found his heart and soul moved by the memories and legacy of his career whilst singing the old Accept songs.
“I think it had something to do with the whole Dirkschneider thing when I came to writing these new songs. I was playing Accept songs every night and there were a lot of memories coming up and maybe that was the reason why the songs turned out the way they did, and why I was choosing to write about more personal things,” he said.
“And music wise, if you are three years on the road and only playing Accept songs, of course that is going to influence the music composing wise also. The last U.D.O. album Decadent was more about the world and how messed up and corrupt and evil it was. Steelfactory is more about believing in yourself and if you do that you can overcome it and get through what is going on in the world. Of course, as I have told you before, I was never a guy to write lyrics about witches and dragons and stuff like that. You can go to a movie and see that. But for me it was always about real life – sometimes it was a little more political, sometimes a little more about society and on this album a little bit more personal. It’s very interesting, because the metal fans, they really listen to the lyrics, and really think about that and keep them close to their heart and that’s very good, and it’s why I pay a lot of attention when I am writing lyrics.”
If there is one song on Steelfactory that combines the personal with the social and political it is One Heart One Soul, which is essentially Dirkschneider’s call for all of humanity to come together as one entity and not allow the artificial divisions of nation and economics and race continue to divide us.
“You can call that a little bit political if you want, but it’s saying we all have one heart and one soul and we’re all living in the world. We don’t need any more borders. We have more and more people on our planet and I think we need to work together more as a whole world and a whole planet. A lot of people see what is going on in Europe with all these people coming from Africa and the Middle East and see it as a big problem. For me, there is no big problem, because we can all live together and help one another as one people on this planet,” he said.
“And it’s also a little bit about the problems in America with the president and the way he was talking about Mexican people. I don’t know what’s going to happen there, but this song is saying we need to have one heart, one soul and one world – that’s the meaning.”
The song The Way, which is the last song on the album, is arguably one of Dirkschneider’s more self-reflective and autobiographical tracks.
“The whole meaning of the song is about my life. Doing the big tours with all the Accept songs had me thinking about a lot. I was playing all the songs with Dirkschneider, all the older Accept stuff, but my life is still going forward with U.D.O. The lyrics are talking about all the memories created from that tour, but also that I am still here and still doing new music,” he said, adding that the song also talks about his love for touring and playing for audiences throughout the world.
“The most important thing for me is to play live. The travelling itself isn’t so bad because these days I have a little bit of luxury with a really nice bus. And if there’s a night off, I stay in a nice hotel. And for the last few years, it’s been great to have my son with me playing drums. [Sven] is doing a really good job and working on Steelfactory, this was his first time to record an album. I am really proud of my son. He is doing a very good job on the drums and getting better and better.
“But it really doesn’t feel like father and son. It’s more like a friendship. It’s not like I am always lecturing him. We are talking more as friends and bandmates,” he said.
U.D.O.’s current lineup also features guitarist Andrey Smimov and long-time bassist Fitty Wienhold, who has been at Dirkschneider’s side since 1996. Former guitarist Stefan Kaufmann has been helping out on live dates, until a permanent second guitarist can be added to the roster.
“I was not very lucky with the last two guitar players, they were not really team players. Andrey has been with me for six years, and he did all the guitars for the new album. But I want to have a second guitar player to work out stuff like harmony solos. We are close to having the right guy, and I think by the middle of September we can announce a new guitar player for U.D.O,” he said, adding that the band will tour Russia for a month starting at the end of October, and then in the will play some shows, including a metal-oriented cruise early in the new year, before embarking on a full European tour in the Spring of 2019. Dates in North America may happen later next year.
“Definitely I want to come back to Canada, which was very good for us last time,” Dirkschneider said.
For more information on Steelfactory and any forthcoming U.D.O. tour dates, visit www.udo-online.de.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
SHARE THIS POST:
