YMMV / Running Wild

• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • Although it has its defenders and still retains some of the classic Running Wild spirit, the post-Victory era is widely considered to be this. Rolf openly admits he started growing rather fatigued of playing in the same style for so many years straight, and it shows, with the music of the final three albums prior to the band's short-lived dissolution taking on a much more stripped-down anthemic hard rock sound reminiscent of Rolf's early musical influences like KISS and AC/DC.
  • Opinions are divided in regards to the band's output after its reformation in 2011, with some appreciating the partial return to form presented in songs like "Warmongers" and "Last of the Mohicans" off of Rapid Foray or "Bloody Island" from Resilient, while others still lament the more subdued and pop-oriented approach that continues to pervade the songwriting and the fact that it's more or less just Rolf's solo project at this point.
• Awesome Music: God, where does one start? Just have a listen to "Under Jolly Roger" and you'll be sailing on from there.
• Broken Base:
  • Which era of the band is better: the raw, thrashy, satanic-themed Speed Metal of Gates to Purgatory and Branded and Exiled, or the still fast but more melodic Power Metal-influenced odes to life on the high seas that the band would become famous for?
  • Whether the band's New Tens-onward output is a fresh return to the old pirate metal form or just a series of repetitive cock rock tributes that holds the Running Wild moniker In Name Only.
• Epic Riff: The band has this in spades, with "Under Jolly Roger", "Death or Glory", "Conquistadores", "Black Hand Inn", “Treasure Island”, and "The Ballad of William Kidd" barely even scratching the surface.
• Epileptic Trees: Due to the robotic and unnatural drum sound heard in Victory and The Brotherhood, some fans theorized that the studio drummer officially credited on the albums, Angelo Sasso, didn't really exist, and the drums are actually a computer instrument (with Rolf employing a fake name in the credits to cover this up). Rolf has denied these rumours in interviews, claiming that Angelo Sasso was just a friend of his using a stage name.
  • Some fans still doubt Rolf is telling the truth, pointing to the fact that no one else besides him had ever met or interacted with Angelo Sasso, and that Rolf claims he died of a heart attack immediately before the time of the interview, which they suspect is a haphazard excuse to deter anyone from trying to find and talk to "Angelo".
  • Angelo Sasso literally translates to "Angel Rock" in Italian, although Angelo is occasionally used as a given name in German as well.
  • This controversy was lampshaded by some bands who used software drums listing Angelo Sasso as their drummer.
• Genre Turning Point: These days, with so many other pirate metal bands around like Alestorm, Rumahoy, Red Rum, Swashbuckle, Storm Seeker, and Lagerstein, Running Wild may not seem so special in comparison to younger fans who got their start on the more recent acts in the microgenre, but it's important to remember that Running Wild literally invented pirate metal, and it's likely none of the former bands would exist without the groundwork they laid as the definitive pirate metal band from the 80s up until now.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The band is particularly popular in South America, especially in Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. There is also a very strong following in Sweden, where they played fairly often in their early days.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The intro and outro of "Under Jolly Roger".
  "Man the cannons! FIREEEEEE!" *full broadside*
  "Ready boardiiing!" "YAAAAAGHH!"
• Narm:
  • "Port Royal" starts off with one of the most awkward Metal Screams ever put to a song.
    Yeaoaoaooooooooo!
  • Like many other German metal bands, RW weren't really good at English at the start of their career, as exemplified by "Genghis Khan" from their first album:
    The flame of badness burned inside him
    That was the only thing he had got
  • The tradition of poorly worded English is just as prevalent in Resilient's title track:
    We gonna stay resilient!
  • The bizarre "BLEHGH!" in "Adrian S.O.S.", which is even funnier since it ends the otherwise extremely hard-hitting song mid-riff.
• Signature Song: "Under Jolly Roger", and to a lesser extent, "Riding the Storm".
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The main riff of "Ballad of William Kidd" resembles a more major key influenced version of the "Crazy Train" intro.
  • The chorus and pre-chorus riffs of “Freewind Rider” sound a lot like the main riff of “Riding on the Wind” (the song title itself may even be a nod), although played in a lower key and at a much faster tempo.
  • "Desert Rose" as a whole is very similar to Def Leppard's "You Got Me Runnin'".
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • A common complaint about the albums from Victory onward, which, as mentioned above, mainly feature mid-tempo arena rock numbers as opposed to the much faster and heavier power/speed metal sound of the band's previous offerings.
  • Also as mentioned above, some fans of the band's early material felt this way when RW adopted the pirate image and subsequently stopped emphasizing the satanic theme as much.