Live report ACCEPT, MIKE TRAMP (with Songs Of White Lion) & INDUCTION, Grosse Freiheit 36, Hamburg – December 12th, 2023

Metal and rock, veterans and youngster – all meets tonight at Grosse Freiheit 36 in Hamburg. The venue at Reeperbahn hosts German metal veterans Accept, who start a two shows mini-tour and with them on board is Mike Tramp with a special White Lion set and German metal youngsters Induction. This generation-bridging line-up is supposed to provide a blistering metal night – a welcomed distraction from the current x-mas excess.

Since Induction was announced rather late as the opening act and potentially not everybody is aware of the new starting time, the room still shows some empty spaces when the guys enter the stage. Step by step though the venue gets more crowded which is a great thing as Induction do their best to provide headbangers with great music. The band, driven by Tim Hansen, the son of Helloween legend Kai Hansen, obviously enjoys their time on stage. Induction is a young and hungry band a fact that can be experienced with each song played and tunes like the heavy pounding ‘Go to Hell’ are pure metal magic. With ‘Queen of Light’, the last song fills the room and as not expected differently, chants like “One more song” go hand in hand with a strong and warm applause.

Now we move from metal to rock with Mike Tramp who takes a everybody onto a journey into the late 80s. White Lion was a mega seller band at the time, a hardrock outfit that sold out the big arenas. Danish singer Mike Tramp was the frontman of this iconic band, and he brings the best White Lion songs to Hamburg tonight. Under the banner of ‘Songs Of White Lion’, Tramp and his companions take people on a time travel, reminding of the White Lion show at Docks back in 1991.

White Lion songs are timeless and even 30 years later anthems like ‘Hungry’, Little Fighter’ and ‘Wait’ unfold their full flavor. Unfortunately for Tramp and band the reaction of fans is rather hanseatically reserved. They guys would have deserved better. No doubt, fans in the front row enjoy the moment but it isn’t the big party vibe that rolls like a rock’n’roll wave through the venue – from front to back. Still, Mike Tramp is a great singer and that he has with Marcus Nand an excellent guitar player next to him is an extra spice for a grooving hard rock feast. The band gives their best and it is a delight to listen to these classics in rock again after three decades while the superb ‘Lady of the Valley’ finishes off 50 minutes of rock history.

That most fans came for Accept is pretty obvious. The moment lights go out, the venue turns into a metal madhouse and it doesn’t seem to matter that Wolf Hoffmann is the only remaining founding member. The songs do the job as they mirror pure heavy metal. Hereby it is irrelevant from which era of the band we are talking about. Today’s setlist reflects the best of Accept and we start with a newer song. ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ is taken from the latest studio album ‘Too Mean to Die’ and is the opener of a two-hour show. The latter is rather exceptional these days when many bands leave the stage after appr. 80 minutes.

Accept let the music do the talking. There are a couple of moments when frontman Mark Tornillo talks to the crowd and for the rest, it is song after song being fired into the audience.

With ‘Riff Orgy’, the band also include a medley tonight which they started with during the festival season. Reactions were that good that the blend of ‘Demon’s Night / Starlight / Losers and Winners / Flash Rockin’ Man’ is also a part of tonight’s show, leading to another classic – ‘Breaker’.

The further we go the more of these classics appear. ‘Princess of the Dawn’, a timeless metal anthem, is leading to a great sing-a long session before the famous intro to ‘Fast as a Shark’ fills the room. It is the moment with the biggest fun in the crowd as Mark Tornillo brings an inflatable shark on stage, a swimming pool toy, which he throughs into the audience. And like a balloon the shark seems to dance to the heavy rhythms of the high-speed anthem.

‘Teutonic Terror’ and ‘Pandemic’ are songs from the newer era of the band and they fit perfectly with the old stuff of which ‘Balls to the Wall’ and ‘I’m a Rebel’ herald the end of a well-chosen setlist.

Accept showed tonight that traditional heavy metal is alive, and it is the magical energy of heavy riffs, a pounding beat, great vocals and filigree solos that fascinate as much as they did more than four decades ago. The metal heart is still beating strong.

Setlist Accept:

Zombie Apocalypse
Symphony of Pain
Restless and Wild
London Leatherboys
The Abyss
Objection Overruled
Overnight Sensation
Riff Orgy (Demon’s Night / Starlight / Losers and Winners / Flash Rockin’ Man)
Breaker
The Undertaker
Shadow Soldiers
Princess of the Dawn
Fast as a Shark
Metal Heart
Teutonic Terror
Pandemic
Hung, Drawn and Quartered
Balls to the Wall (Encore)
I’m a Rebel (Encore)