U.D.O., the German metal band led by former ACCEPT frontman Udo Dirkschneider, has collaborated with Das Musikkorps der Bundeswehr, the military band of the German federal armed forces, on an album called “We Are One”, to be released on July 17 via AFM Records/Soulfood Music.
The LP contains 15 new songs that were developed and arranged by U.D.O. together with Lieutenant Colonel Christoph Scheibling. Two other former ACCEPT members, Stefan Kaufmann and Peter Baltes, were part of the songwriting too, as well as the German Armed Forces composers Guido Rennert and Alexander Reuber.
Speaking to the “Do You Know Jack?” podcast, Udo stated about the lyrical themes covered on “We Are One” (hear audio below): “When we were sitting together [to discuss] how we wanna do this album, what kind of message we wanna have on this album, we said, ‘Okay, so many things are wrong these days.’
“When we were writing the lyrics, there was no corona or the George Floyd thing going on in America. But now it came to be really up to date.
“The point was to get the message [out that] we are one,” he explained. “That means we are one and we have to stay together and we have to take care of our future, especially for the next generations, that they can still live on this planet.
“So many things are going wrong — political things. Wars… And also, it doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow, red or whatever, we are all humans and we have to stay together and keep an eye on our planet. I mean, if you see what’s happened with all the plastic stuff, what’s going on, with all the trash. And also, they burned down the [Amazon rainforest]. All that stuff, it’s really scary. The climate, it’s already changing. Also in Germany, this is not like it was before, like having winter, springtime, summer and fall. It’s completely changed. That already you can see.
“We have to take care of this planet. I think a lot of people have to think about this. Also governments. Especially in Germany, we have this ‘Fridays For Future’ [climate rallies] — young people do this every Friday. But the German government, in a way, was listening and woke up and they started doing something. And that was very interesting to see — you can do something if you really wanna do something.”
Dirkschneider also addressed science denialism, deployed for years against climate change and, most recently, the coronavirus.
“Some people say, ‘Well, where’s the problem? Everything is fine,'” he said. “No, it’s not. It’s the same — for quite a lot of people, they say, ‘Corona doesn’t exist. It’s just a thing from the government. They wanna keep us at home.’ Are they stupid or what? This is, like, ‘Hello?’ [Laughs] Wake up. And yeah, there’s a lot of bullshit with this social media. It’s also like for Instagram, all this stuff: ‘You have to use this makeup,’ ‘You have to do this, ‘You have to do that.’ It’s also what we have on the [U.D.O.] song ‘Neon Diamond’. This song is about all this fucking bullshit, what’s going on if you have advertising on TV. You have to look like a model, blah blah blah. Is this the most important thing in the world? I don’t think so.”
