I'm A Rebel is the second album from German heavy metal band Accept, best known for bulldog frontman Udo Dirkschneider and their 1984 song
Balls To The Wall. The band has gone on to build quite a cult following over the years for their style of Judas Priest meets AC/DC no nonsense macho heavy metal, often accused of having a homosexual subtext (the hairy man leg on the cover of the
Balls to The Wall LP and songs like
London Leatherboys did them no favours here). Still, Accept always managed to stand out from the pack enough to be considered an essential metal band of it's day and has released a number of solid albums including this one.
Title track
I'm A Rebel is credited as being written by George Alexander, which is a pseudonym for Alex Young, elder brother of Angus Young and Malcolm Young. This only makes the AC/DC comparisons to Accept even more interesting, it is a belter of a rock song with it's chorus ("
I'm a rebel, a rebel, don't you just know it?") making it an early Accept classic. it is not a far stretch to imagine this as an AC/DC track, and indeed the band has covered it before.
Save Us indicates the direction the rest of the album goes in, the group trying to find their future niche by experimenting with a commercial sound. This makes for some great energetic rock songs,
Thunder And Lightning,
China Lady,
Do It and
I Wanna Be No Hero aren't much different from one another but all feature good riffs, excellent leadwork and solid choruses.
The album has a couple of more restrained numbers, both sung by bassist Peter Baltes.
No Time to Lose the first of these. With it's wavery guitar arpeggios at the beginning it works into a nice ballad, featuring a nice, if cliche lyrical hook ("
oh baby/give me your love, no time to lose/baby come back run away all my blues/light up my life, don't waste the time/I know if you are back then you are mine").
The King is based around an acoustic guitar pattern, the chorus section overlayed by some distorted rock guitars which gives it a strong dynamic.
I'm A Rebel is an excellent release from Accept, yet to reach their peak but definitely showing plenty of potential as a fledging metal act. It features a number of worthwhile heavy metal tracks, none of which perhaps stand out enough to be called truly classic (there is no
Balls To The Wall here) but are all consistently fun to listen to in any case. It works well as an album, it's weak spots aren't enough to completely damage it from being listened to in it's entirety.
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