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Udo Dirkschneider and his eponymous band keep chugging along even though they’ve been on the road for the last several years doing a "farewell" tour featuring Udo’s last time singing the songs he helped create while in Accept. Steelfactory is the band’s sixteenth studio effort and the exposure to those old Accept songs that clearly influenced their last album, Decadent, is still present though maybe to a lesser degree.

I found Decadent to be an excellent release by U.D.O. after a couple of albums that were more in the hard rock vein and had high hopes for Steelfactory. Udo still sounds the same as he did back in the early ‘80s which is kind of amazing considering his gravelly delivery. You can still hear echoes of albums like Balls to the Wall and Metal Heart on Steelfactory’s highlights like "Tongue Reaper," "A Bite of Evil" and "Eraser." You get speed, squealing solos and Udo’s bombastic shout washing over you in a wall of Teutonic metal. As with most of U.D.O.’s albums, there are probably more songs than necessary which creates filler like "Hungry and Angry," but of the 13 tracks there are only one or two others that didn’t need to be here.

Steelfactory isn’t as good as Decadent at the end of the day but it’s still U.D.O. and that means straight-up, chugging heavy metal (with a little more hard rock this time), so if you have any affection for old Accept, it should put a jolt in your air guitar.