Fan-filmed video footage of ACCEPT's September 15 performance at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City can be seen below (courtesy of John Erigo; except for the last clip). ACCEPT's new album, "Blind Rage", sold around 6,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release. The band's previous CD, 2012's "Stalingrad", opened with around 5,400 units to debut at position No. 81 on The Billboard 200 chart. The group's 2010 album, "Blood Of The Nations", registered a first-week tally of 2,900 copies to land at No. 187. "Blind Rage" was released on August 15 via Nuclear Blast. Like its two predecessors, 2010's "Blood Of The Nations" and 2012's "Stalingrad", the new effort was helmed by British producer Andy Sneap, who has previously worked with MEGADETH, EXODUS, TESTAMENT, ARCH ENEMY and KILLSWITCH ENGAGE. The cover artwork was created by Daniel Goldsworthy. The "Stampede" video was filmed on location in the high desert of California at the Devil's Punchbowl (a rock formation that looks like it's from another world) with director Greg Aronowitz ("Batman & Robin", "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"). In a recent interview with Metal Assault, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann stated about the musical direction of "Blind Rage": "I think what we have here is really a collection of totally typical ACCEPT songs with the classic feel, and, of course, as always, there's an overriding theme of aggression and rage in all our music. I mean, otherwise it wouldn't be metal. "People call our music at this point 'classic metal,' I believe, and we just fell in love with the title 'Blind Rage' and the artwork. Interestingly enough, we don't even have a song called 'Blind Rage'. We just have a collection of songs that to me all feel totally 100 percent classic ACCEPT." Regarding the songwriting and recording process for "Blind Rage", Wolf said: "Andy is such a good partner now, we couldn't even imagine working without him on this album. He's such a natural fit and he did a great job on the last two albums. The only thing that we did way different this time from 'Stalingrad' is, we really took our time. 'Stalingrad' was really made almost in a rush, to be honest, because we had so many commitments right before we went to the studio to do the album and right after. Basically, by the time we started working on that album, we already knew when it had to be finished and what gigs we had booked. So that put us under enormous pressure, but this time, we really made sure it's right before it's ever released. We didn't work excessively long, we just took a little more time to make sure that we were in a little more comfortable place. These last few weeks we've just refined and tweaked little things that we normally wouldn't have the time to do."
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