Wolf Hoffmann has confirmed that work on ACCEPT's next album of all-new material has not started — and will not start while the band's 50th-anniversary campaign is running.
Speaking to Anfetamina Y Rock, the guitarist was asked about a follow-up to 2024's Humanoid. "I haven't done anything yet," he said of writing new music. "Because I know we wanna make a new studio album, but to me, it's very difficult to do multitasking. Right now, this year is focused on ACCEPT's 50-year celebration, and maybe part of next year as well. And then when the time is right, we're gonna go back into the studio and lock ourselves in and go full force and write songs, but that time hasn't come yet."
He was blunt about why. "I never write stuff… I'm not good at doing this stuff on the side. Right now, for instance, if I'm doing interviews and doing things like… I can't just pick up a guitar 10 minutes from now and start writing a great song, just because my frame of mind is — it's not right, if you know what I mean. I need to get into the zone and then start focusing on that shit, and really stay on it every day, and then stuff will happen."
It is a sharper picture than the one he painted three weeks ago, when he told Loud & Clear With Belgian Jasper that a new ACCEPT album was "gonna happen sooner than later. It has to, because the show must go on." Both things can be true — the intent is there, the calendar is not.
Humanoid arrived in April 2024 via Napalm Records, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Andy Sneap. What has occupied the band since is Teutonic Titans 1976–2026, the anniversary album released on September 4, also on Napalm: nineteen reimagined versions of the band's best-known songs with a staggering fifty guests spread across them, moving chronologically from "I'm A Rebel" in 1980 through to Eat The Heat in 1989.
Asked what he is still chasing after half a century, Hoffmann sounded like a man with very little left on the list. "I'm super proud and super happy where we are right now, especially with this 50-year thing. This has gone so well, so much better than I could ever have hoped for, that I can't really think of much that I would wanna still achieve. I mean, I still have the feeling that the best song hasn't been written yet, and I still believe the best show hasn't been played yet. So I'm still thinking we're right in the middle of it, and the best is yet to come."
Then, the one item he would add: "If there was like a Nobel Prize for heavy metal, that would be nice, but that doesn't exist."