ACCEPT — Russian Roulette

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3.94 | 46 ratings | 4 reviews

Album · 1986

Filed under Heavy Metal
By ACCEPT

Tracklist

1. T.V. War (3:27)
2. Monsterman (3:25)
3. Russian Roulette (5:22)
4. It's Hard to Find a Way (4:19)
5. Aiming High (4:26)
6. Heaven Is Hell (7:12)
7. Another Second to Be (3:19)
8. Walking in the Shadow (4:27)
9. Man Enough to Cry (3:14)
10. Stand Tight (4:05)

Total Time: 43:21

Line-up/Musicians

- Udo Dirkschneider / vocals
- Wolf Hoffmann / guitars
- Jörg Fischer / guitars
- Peter Baltes / bass
- Stefan Kaufmann / drums

About this release

Release date: April 21, 1986
Label: Portrait Records

Thanks to Time Signature, rushfan4, Unitron, diamondblack for the updates

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ACCEPT RUSSIAN ROULETTE reviews

Specialists/collaborators reviews

Unitron

Tied with Breaker as Accept's best album, though best for different reasons. Breaker is a fantastic album for the pure raw edge of a band fed up with record labels telling them what to do and breaking through into their own sound (Perhaps the reason for the title?). Russian Roulette, on the other hand, is a fantastic album for how it sounds like a band that's taken on the world and delivers metal anthems with an introspective wisdom.

It's an amazingly crafted album, as it instantly hooks you with the infectious catchiness alone and gargantuan drums, with the title track even maybe beating their classic Balls to the Wall in triumphant power. However, the lyrics and melodies show a band with a lot more emotion than many gave them credit for. The aforementioned title track is a more effective song against war than most, taking it on a more personal level of a soldier rather than just saying "people die". Also, Accept's probably the only band who could write a song called Man Enough to Cry that's great and not a sappy hair band ballad.

I love every song on here, though my favorites are definitely Monsterman, the title track, Heaven is Hell, Walking in the Shadow, and Man Enough to Cry (Which actually kind of reminds me of Dio-era Rainbow with the riffs). These have some especially amazing group vocal choruses. Such an incredibly underrated album, and not only tied with Breaker as Accept's best, but also one of the absolute best 80's heavy metal albums out there.

more than 2 years ago
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Report #301474

Warthur

Accept could have kept Dieter Dierks on as producer and cranked out another album or seven rehashing Metal Heart over and over, but that didn't appeal to them and on Russian Roulette they went back to producing their own material.

Props to them to making a firm decision to make records the way they enjoyed and which was creatively satisfying to them, even though the alternative might have made them heaps of money, right? But there's a mild problem, in that they don't seem to have a firm idea on a new direction; at points they seem to be trying to go for the darker tone of something like Breaker, whilst at other stages they seem to be back to the anthemic tone of Balls to the Wall, but whilst Metal Heart sounded like a strong and forceful blending of the two styles here they just don't seem to have a firm idea of where they want to go.

Udo would drop out of the band to get U.D.O. going after this, and perhaps it was time; it's not that Russian Roulette is a bad album, but it isn't a great album either, and it feels like the Accept well was beginning to dry up here.

more than 2 years ago
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Report #321051

Time Signature

German roulette...

Genre: traditional heavy metal

Do you want ten reasons to love German traditional 80s heavy metal?

Okay, here they are: 1) "T.V. War", 2) "Monsterman", 3) "Russian Roulette", 4) "It's Hard to Find a Way", 5) "Aiming High", 6) "Heaven Is Hell", 7) "Another Second to Be", 8) "Walking in the Shadow", 9) "Man Enough to Cry", 10) "Stand Tight".

There you go - ten reasons to love German traditional 80s metal, and on one album. "Russian Roulette" offers nothing but pure, reverb-ladden, unadulterated traditional heavy metal of the 1980s. All the wonderful klichés are in place, including catchy melodic choruses, guitar acrobatics, powerful and solid drums.

And, of course, Udo Dirkschneider's unique voice adds to, if not constitutes, Accept's distinct sound, while, as is typical of Accept, the lyrical content turns things as we think we know them upside down and challenge our stagnated and conservative worldview as in "Heaven is Hell" and "Man Enough to Cry".

I'd recommend this album to fans of traditional heavy metal, and I think that fans of power metal, hard rock, and perhaps also glam metal might like it too.

more than 2 years ago
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Report #217664

Members reviews

Losimba

After the great Metal Heart album, expectations were high among Accept fans for its successor. For me, those expectations were fully met by Russian Roulette, which is the culmination of the band's development from a rather simple Heavy Metal band to a more complex style of music.

Of course, there is no Beethoven solo played by Wolf Hofmann on this album, but the sound has matured, as have the song structures and lyrics. Yes, there are still simple, driving songs like Monsterman or Another Second To Be, but on the other hand little gems like Stand Tight or Walking In The Shadow. But none of the songs can be called weak which is a huge feature for Accept whose biggest problem has always been and still is the big gap in quality between the songs of their albums. And then there are two true pieces of art, namely the title track and Heaven Is Hell. I'm not sure whether I've heard refrains with real melodies and four different lines on any other Accept album.

So this is definitely the best studio album by Accept, if only by a narrow margin above Metal Heart. The gap in quality between the songs is, as I wrote before, pleasantly small, but too big for a 5 star rating. But I'm happy to give 4.5 stars.