Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: 6/18/2021
Production: Charlie Bauerfiend & Dennis Ward
Album length: 65.05 min.
Genre: Power Metal
Rating: 9.5/10
German power metal giants Helloween are back with their sixteenth studio album, which carries a disarmingly simple title: “Helloween”. That’s also what their very first EP from way back in 1985 was called, which will probably cause some confusion among all those music lovers who swear by stat-crunching music apps like last.fm. A title like that signals a new beginning and a rebirth for this long-lived band, which currently has what you could only call a dream lineup, with three guitarists and three singers. Each of those three singers, who trade off and share the main vocal lines in a smart way, left their own mark on a particular era of Helloween history.
For power metal icon and guitarist Kai Hansen, who also built a successful career as the leader of Gamma Ray, this is his first Helloween studio outing since 1988, while back in 1993 it looked like Michael Kiske, who never exactly set the world on fire as a solo artist later on, would never step into a studio again with the rest of those indestructible worshippers of anthropomorphic pumpkins, magic keys and enchanted rings. Both Hansen and Kiske left a major stamp on the two “Keeper of The Seven Keys” albums, which are still considered Helloween’s key achievements to this day. Many fans had a hard time accepting their departures and the stylistic changes that came with them.
After Kiske’s exit, with Andi Deris on lead vocals and under the (unofficial) leadership of guitarist and mastermind Michael Weikath, Helloween entered one of their most successful periods in the mid-nineties, which more or less ran out of steam around 2000 with the album “The Dark Ride”. From then on, Helloween put out albums of more or less fluctuating, questionable quality, with occasional flashes of their former brilliance. One of the brighter moments of the last twenty years was definitely the arrival of guitarist Sascha Gerstner and drummer Daniel Löble, who brought a fresh breeze into the sails of a band that was creatively running dry.
After the release of the utterly uninspired “My God-Given Right” (2015), which many fans consider their worst album ever, it looked like the end of the Helloween story was right around the corner. But Hansen and Kiske, who had joined forces again a few years earlier as members of Unisonic, buried the hatchet and returned to their old buddies in 2016. What followed was a string of hugely successful tours, a double live album and the announcement of a long-awaited new studio album, which finally came out on June 18, 2021.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right away: this is by far the best Helloween album in the last twenty years, so the (over)the-top expectations of longtime fans will mostly be met. Just look at the cover of “Helloween”, which isn’t a computer-generated hack job like Helloween covers of the last twenty years, but an oil painting, plus the return of the logo with the classic stylized pumpkin, and you know the music will be at a top-notch level again for the first time in ages. The joint production of Charlie Bauerfeind and Magnum’s current bassist Dennis Ward turned out to be the perfect match.
All three singers have, for the most part, divided up the vocal lines in a really smart and effective way when they’re not singing shared vocal harmonies, which is definitely the main strength and the special trait of this album. Kiske’s technical superiority and operatic flair are front and center mostly in the epic sections, Deris’s all-round chameleon qualities are key in the more varied, atmospheric parts, while Hansen and his screeching exploits get the edge in the punchier, darker moments. Something that will make many people happy and pleasantly surprise them is that there are no ballads on “Helloween”, which probably nobody expected. At the same time, the band didn’t try to craft another “keeper”, although, as you’d expect, certain songs do recall the days of peak glory here and there, which is very commendable. Instead, they preferred to combine the best songwriting ideas of all the key creative forces of these Teutonic metal champions. That means everybody in the band was involved in writing individual pieces, except drummer Löble and Kiske, who was never a songwriter to be envied and probably realizes his own limitations in that department by now.
Opener “Out For the Glory” is a mighty power metal epic with fighting chants and melodic guitar harmonies, serving up a seamless trade-off between all three singers right away, although thanks to the dominant epic atmosphere, Kiske’s unbelievably well-preserved voice takes center stage here. This is pure Helloween classic and a great start to the album, with a chorus that bears a slight resemblance to the evergreen “Eagle Fly Free” from “Keeper of The Seven Keys – Part II” (1988). “Fear of the Fallen”, which also came out as a single, has an acoustic intro, but to the relief of many it doesn’t turn into a love ballad. Instead it becomes a proper power metal energy catalyst with plenty of tempo changes, a multi-voiced chorus and an ever-chameleonic Deris out front on vocals.
“Best Time” is a short but epic, rhythmically wound-up “bomb” with an insanely catchy chorus, and in terms of atmosphere and hook it could most easily be put next to the classic “I Want Out”, even though the two songs are structurally quite different. It’s been a long time since Helloween managed to pull off such a good song that runs under four minutes. The socially critical, eco-conscious “Mass Pollution”, with a fired-up Deris on lead vocals, opens with melodic bass lines courtesy of Markus Grosskopf before turning into a seriously fun and epic ride. Stylistically, this track is closer to Helloween from the beginning of the Deris era than to the classic eighties Helloween.
“Angels”, which also features a few shy symphonic arrangements, once again puts Kiske’s operatic, timeless vocal greatness in the spotlight. It proves yet again why he was the singer that many Helloween fans, despite Deris’s brilliance, still missed for more than two decades. The ever-charismatic Deris gets another chance to shine as lead vocalist on the excellent “Rise Without Chains”, which has all the ingredients of a future Helloween classic, especially its rousing chorus. “Indestructible”, which probably counts among the songs with autobiographical lyrics, is one of the punchiest moments on “Helloween”, but that doesn’t stop the masters of power metal epicness from crafting yet another mighty chorus that will lodge itself in the hearts of most fans in an instant.
“Robot King” is another good example of blending classic and newer Helloween songwriting approaches, with Deris once again taking the lead vocal role and the epic, multi-voiced chorus as the high point. It’s a rhythmically wound-up piece whose lyrics reflect both social critique and the shared fascination most Helloween members have with anything that smells of science fiction. With Deris alone on vocals it would have been a very solid track and one of the better ones in the last twenty years, but Kiske and Hansen add extra value with their vocal contributions.
“Cyanide”, a short but neat little gem, is a straight-up energy catalyst on which mighty guitar harmonies and epic chants “blossom”, with a fighting-fit Deris out front. On “Down in the Dumps”, yet another one of the highlights of “Helloween”, where all three singers shine equally, you can also pick up some prog metal elements, thanks to increased rhythmic complexity and a handful of relatively shy sound effects in the background.
The one-minute instrumental “Orbit” is the intro to the next (super)epic, “Skyfall”, which also came out as a single. Helloween wouldn’t be Helloween if they didn’t close out the album with a 12-minute-plus epic. It features a typically satirical story about an alien who crash-lands on Earth after his spaceship breaks down and barely escapes from earthling scientists, men in black and the army. Even though this ambitious epic doesn’t compete with masterpieces of similar length like “Halloween” and “Keeper of the Seven Keys”, it’s still an extremely interesting and fun power metal adventure that, unlike most recent Iron Maiden epics, doesn’t come across as drawn out. All three singers, Hansen included, get enviable room here to build tense, dramatic atmosphere. Kai takes the initiative in the middle of a melodramatic section that strongly smacks of Gamma Ray, his other band, which wrote power metal history, especially in the nineties. The epic chorus is built exactly to the taste of every longtime fan. A slightly more subtle touch or two wouldn’t have hurt, but otherwise there’s not much to fault on “Skyfall”, as it’s one of Helloween’s best songwriting feats of the last two decades.
The special edition of the album includes two bonus tracks, which are far from leftover material and can easily stand next to the “regular” part of the album in terms of quality. “Golden Times” has autobiographical lyrics and Kiske taking the vocal lead. It’s a genuine Helloween standard with a classic, feel-good chorus that draws quite a few parallels to the band’s “golden years” (the eighties). “Save My Hide”, with Deris out front, is another example of a short but quality song of a kind Helloween haven’t exactly had in abundance in the past few years. The Japanese version includes two more autobiographical tracks: the cheerful “We Are Real” with Kai on lead vocals and the rousing anthem “Pumpkins United” with all three singers on equal footing. The latter was the first studio effort by the current version of the band after Hansen and Kiske returned in 2016.
The experiment of creating the ultimate version of Helloween worked out brilliantly in the studio too, and you can hear it on every single “Helloween” track. After twenty years, you can draw the very cheering conclusion that Helloween have finally made a worthy successor to their mighty eighties legacy, one that doesn’t even try to sound like a continuation of that famous era, but reflects the new songwriting maturity of this cult power metal band. Usually, “supergroup” experiments like this, the kind that even a Dr. Stein would bless (Helloween fans will get the reference right away), often fall flat, if we just remember what happened to Yes in the early nineties, but Helloween pulled off a very pleasant surprise and broke that negative tradition in rock music. Iron Maiden have had three guitarists since 1999, but Helloween went a step further and, besides three guitarists, very successfully used all three singers in the studio, which is a studio experiment without precedent in power metal history.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Out For The Glory
2. Fear Of The Fallen
3. Best Time
4. Mass Pollution
5. Angels
6. Rise Without Chains
7. Indestructible
8. Robot King
9. Cyanide
10. Down In The Dumps
11. Orbit
12. Skyfall
Lineup:
Andi Deris – vocals
Michael Kiske – vocals
Kai Hansen – vocals, guitar
Michael Weikath – guitar
Sascha Gerstner – guitar
Markus Grosskopf – bass
Dani Löble – drums
