who has as individuals -so little to do with controversy and absolutely nothing in particular with anything but being VERY straight." The front cover image of the album bears a striking resemblance to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's work "Patrice, N.Y.C." (1977). This album was the only Accept album which guitarist Herman Frank played on until 2010's Blood of the Nations (though he was given credit on 1982's Restless and Wild). Professional wrestler Chris Jericho's band, Fozzy, did their own cover of the song "Balls to the Wall". The Swedish band Amon Amarth also covered the song as a bonus track for their 2011 album Surtur Rising. Release There are two different remasters of this album. The first one is part of Sony's The Metal Masters Series while the second one is part of the BMG Remastered Edition. Both editions feature songs taken from the live EP Kaizoku-Ban. The 2013 release from UK record label Hear No Evil Recordings contains the 1990 live album Staying a Life. Reception Balls to the Wall received very positive reviews and was praised by Accept's contemporaries and successors. Ty Tabor of the American hard rock band King's X was a fan of the album and its production, saying that it "set a new bar for what heavy rock could sound like on a record". Dimebag Darrell of Pantera and Damageplan, Doro Pesch of Warlock and Kai Hansen of Helloween were all fans of the band and consider Accept among their main musical influences. The Swedish power metal band HammerFall said they recorded their album Renegade in 2000 with Michael Wagener because they had Balls to the Wall in mind. HammerFall also covered the song "Head Over Heels" with Accept's ex-lead vocalist, Udo Dirkschneider, on the 2008 album Masterpieces. Canadian critic Martin Popoff liked the complexity of the lyrics combined with the clean and restrained riffing, which give the album "subtle sophistication" and a "singular purpose". He put Balls to the Wall at No. 1 of his Top 100 Heavy Metal Albums of the '80s list. Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic refers to it as an "essential heavy metal album", only "slightly more melodic" and "less gritty" than Restless and Wild and considers the title track "an irresistible, fist-pumping masterpiece that came to epitomize the modern, slow-marching metal anthem as it became known." According to Pierre Bégin of the online magazine The Metal Crypt, the album "is simply