Udo Dirkschneider has confirmed to Greece's Rock Overdose that he will no longer perform any ACCEPT songs live once he has completed his current touring obligations with his DIRKSCHNEIDER project. "I did now the DIRKSCHNEIDER thing for nearly three hundred shows — I played only ACCEPT songs," he said. "If [the fans] wanna hear some ACCEPT classic stuff, what can I say? Then please go to [see] ACCEPT; they're still touring. "I would say as long as ACCEPT is existing, I don't play any ACCEPT songs anymore," he explained. "If they maybe split up and I'm still continuing to tour, then it's a possibility to play some ACCEPT songs. But at the moment, they're still going on tour and they play also a lot of old ACCEPT classic stuff, so here we go. I mean, I have now 16 U.D.O. albums out and I think we have enough songs to do a setlist without ACCEPT songs." Asked if he still has any contact with his former bandmates, Udo said: "No. No contact anymore. Definitely no contact. There was too many bad things [that] happened. I don't wanna be in contact with them anymore." Back in 2015, ACCEPT guitarist Wolf Hoffmann dismissed Dirkschneider's comment that the band's current lineup — which includes ACCEPT's singer of nearly a decade, Mark Tornillo — performs live "without any emotion," "It's just hilarious at this point," Wolf said. "It's just a big joke in our lives. And we just go on about our lives, and we do our thing, and we just… We let these things go by and laugh about it. He's actually sort of our press agent, in a way. He keeps us [in the news]." The DIRKSCHNEIDER tour, which was originally supposed to conclude with the band's North American run in January/February 2017, has now been extended through the fall of 2018. In addition to Udo and his son Sven (drums), the DIRKSCHNEIDER and U.D.O. bands include bassist Fitty Wienhold and guitarist Andrey Smirnov. DIRKSCHNEIDER released "Live - Back To The Roots - Accepted!" in August 2017 as a DVD/2CD, Blu-ray/2CD and gatefold triple vinyl in two different colors. U.D.O.'s new album, "Steelfactory", was released on August 31 via AFM.
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