UDO DIRKSCHNEIDER To Perform With LORDI At Germany's WACKEN OPEN AIR Festival

Former ACCEPT and current U.D.O. frontman Udo Dirkschneider will join Finnish monster hard rockers LORDI for at least one song during their appearance at this year's Wacken Open Air festival, which is scheduled to take place July 31 - August 2, 2008 in Wacken, Germany.

Dirkschneider makes an appearance on the song "They Only Come Out At Night" (listen to the audio below) on LORDI's latest album, "The Arockalypse", which came out in March 2006.

U.D.O. celebrated its 20th anniversary by playing two special shows in Germany on April 30 in Solingen at Cobra and May 3 in Tuttlingen at Stadthalle. The three-hour Tuttlingen concert was filmed for a DVD and live CD, to be released before in October.

Check out pictures of the Tuttlingen show on the band's official web site: Part 1, Part 2.

U.D.O. released a "best-of" album, "Metallized - 20 Years of Metal", on November 30 via AFM Records. The CD booklet is filled with photos from the last 20 years and and includes liner notes written by Metal Hammer journalist Andreas Schöwe. The first 12 songs on the collection were chosen by fans via the official U.D.O. web site, while tracks 13 to 16 consist of two unreleased songs, an acoustic version of the ACCEPT classic "Balls to the Wall", and a live version of "The Bullet and the Bomb".

U.D.O.'s latest studio album, "Mastercutor", entered the German Media Control chart at position No. 39 — the highest German chart position in the band's history.

Fan-filmed video footage of U.D.O. performing the classic ACCEPT song "Midnight Mover" on December 20, 2007 at the Metropolis Club in Munich, Germany can be viewed below (courtesy of "MartyParty03").