Headbangers Symphony

Headbangers Symphony
Studio album by Wolf Hoffmann
Released	July 1, 2016
Genre	Heavy metal, Neoclassical metal
Length	48:43
Label	Nuclear Blast
Producer	Wolf Hoffmann
Wolf Hoffmann chronology
Classical (1997) Headbangers Symphony (2016)

Headbangers Symphony is the second solo album by German guitarist Wolf Hoffmann, released twenty years after his first solo release, Classical.^[4] The album was released on July 1, 2016 via Nuclear Blast.^[5] The album is available on limited edition red vinyl, limited edition vinyl, digipack CD and digital album formats.

Background

On December 1, 2014, Wolf revealed that he was working on a new solo album during an interview with Metal Shock Finland's Alison Booth before the Accept show in London on November 27.^[6] He claimed that he was working on the album during Accept's touring break.^[7][8][9] He described the album as "a lot more metal than the first one".^[10]

On April 22, 2016, German independent record label, Nuclear Blast, officially revealed the title, artwork, track list and release date of the album.

The first single from the album, "Scherzo", was released on June 6 worldwide and received more than ten thousand views in its first two days on YouTube.^[11][12] Nuclear Blast revealed the first trailer on June 15, in which Wolf explains why it took so long between his first classical release and Headbangers Symphony. He also explained the difficulties he faced when bringing the classical pieces together with metal music.^[13][14][15] The second trailer was published on June 23, showing Wolf driving his old Cadillac and talking about the album.^[16]

Devin Townsend recorded a bass track for the song "Dance of the Knights", which did not make the album due to legal issues. On June 23, Wolf Hoffmann revealed that he was working on a new video for the track "Night On Bald Mountain".^[17] The video was released the same day as the album on both Nuclear Blast and Accept's YouTube channels. It was viewed more than four thousand times on the Nuclear Blast channel in the first few hours of posting. The video starts with Wolf Hoffmann driving his car and four bikers heading toward a location where later they can be seen joining Wolf in playing the musical instruments. It also features Accept drummer Christopher Williams on drums.^{[18][19][20][21]}

Album information

Headbangers Symphony has eleven songs on its track list, which are arranged in the neoclassical metal music style. Even though the majority of musicians who are active in this genre tend to lean towards the baroque way, Wolf Hoffmann mainly involves elements from the romantic period of classical music on this album.^[22]

The first song, "Scherzo", is an adaptation of Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 where he used the riff from Accept's "Teutonic Terror" track. For "Night On Bald Mountain" he adapted Modest Mussorgsky's symphony of the same name. Wolf mixed Georges Bizet's "Je Crois Entendre Encore" with some elements from heavy metal and blues music on the third track but let Bizet's sublime melody speak for itself. On the "Double Cello Concerto in G Minor" song, he added in a riff that makes Vivaldi's "Concerto for two cellos in G minor" have a significantly metal style. The fifth track, "Adagio", is an adaptation of the famous Albinoni's Adagio in G minor composition, which Wolf expanded and made sound slightly different, however he was still loyal to the main theme of this piece. "Symphony No. 40", the sixth track of the album is what Wolf called a "huge challenge". He played Mozart's Symphony No. 40 melody on guitar and mixed it with some heavy metal riffs. The next track, titled "Swan Lake", is an adaptation of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, which sounds different to what other rock and metal musicians have done before. "Madame Butterfly" is eighth in the track list and is an unusual composition of Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly as it was written for a female voice, with Hoffmann using a different time signature. The second Beethoven adaptation piece on the album is "Pathétique", which was originally composed for piano. The tenth track is a ballad adapted from Jules Massenet's opera Méditation which Wolf did not make any major changes on. The last piece of music of the album is "Air on the G String", a variation of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, also known as Air on the G String.^[23]

Track listing

Personnel

Production and performance credits are adapted from the album liner notes.^[24]

• Wolf Hoffmann – guitars
• Jason Bowld and Pat McDonald – drums (Scherzo, Symphony No. 40)
• Peter Baltes and Matthias Rethmann – bass (Symphony No. 40, Air on the G String)
• John Billings – bass (Double Cello Concerto in G Minor)
• Melo Mafali – keyboards
• Czech National Symphony Orchestra – strings

Technical and production personnel

• Wolf Hoffmann – producer
• Daniel Rowlans and Andy Sneap – mixing
• Landr and Daniel Rowlans – mastering
• Stanislav Baroch and Pro Tools Operator Vojtech Komarek – audio engineer
• Studio CNSO, Prague – orchestra recording
• Melo Mafali – string arrangements
• Jan Chalupecky – conductor
• Dirk Baldringer, Michael Voss, Eric Sanders, Gereon Homann, Jan Richter, Jon Mc Daniels – contributors

Charts

References