Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Helloween
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2015
Length: 61:11
Rating: 1.5/5
The fifteenth studio album from the long-running German power metallers from Hamburg, Helloween, and their first new one in two years since the predecessor »Straight Out Of Hell« (2013), is an achievement that suggests the band’s story has slowly run out of steam.
If you know absolutely nothing about the band, this album might work for you and keep you entertained, that much is certain. It’s professionally packaged. Helloween are damn experienced and well-oiled, and the packaging comes to them pretty easily. Recycled packaging, that is. For anyone who knows this band’s catalog, though, the new album will be packaged unconvincingly. It brings thirteen songs and over an hour of new music. Decidedly too long an album. In every respect.
The band tries once more to repackage old, already tested motifs, and the album leans again and again on motifs used on past records. On top of that, Helloween try to serve up a somewhat different sound again: modernized, tuned lower, beefier, with some phrases »thrashed up« here and there, which isn’t bad, especially when they’re backed by the relentless rolling of double bass drum pedals. But this time the album just doesn’t flow smoothly. There’s only one convincing track on it. The first one, Heroes. Everything else is the pathetic doing of a band that has run out of ideas and creative juice. So it’s time to retire, dear boys. Simple as that. This time you’ve bluffed your way through your lack of vitality, which has been plaguing you for the past few years, far too badly.
Two main factors weigh down this release, so that we can calmly place it among the worst achievements of the band’s entire career, if not declare it outright the worst Helloween album. The first factor is the all-too-obvious motif »reheating of old (already heard) soup«, and the second is even worse. It’s bad songwriting. The verses and choruses (plus pre-choruses) are marked by »bizarre« combinations, so the songs simply can’t flow fluidly. The transitions are weakly played too, as if the two guitarists no longer think it’s worth putting in a decent effort to carry out the harmonic ornaments in between. The added keyboards sound like Nintendo games, Deris is no longer vocally convincing at all, his voice is getting thin and nasal, and this time he’s especially plagued by really bad use of English, which sounds more obviously German-tinged. The harmonizing of the chorus melodies with multi-part vocals doesn’t convince either. The album is full of bizarre arrangement choices, and this time Helloween are a shadow of themselves. It’s been glued together badly.
This is also the fifth consecutive studio album Helloween have recorded with an unchanged line-up. They’ve never held together this long with any line-up in their career. So this album should reflect the band’s evolutionary growth and maturing, but that has come to a halt. Simple as that. They just can’t be bothered anymore. An album of total gray mediocrity that you can easily give a wide berth.
Line-up
Andi Deris – vocals
Michael Weikath – guitar, backing vocals
Sascha Gerstner – guitar, backing vocals
Markus Grosskopf – bass guitar, backing vocals
Daniel Löble – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Matthias Ulmer – keyboards
William “Billy” King – backing vocals
Olaf Senkbeil – backing vocals
Production
Charlie Bauerfeind
Track List
1. Heroes
2. Battle’s Won
3. My God – Given Right
4. Stay Crazy
5. Lost In America
6. Russian Roule
7. The Swing Of A Fallen World
8. Like Everybody Else
9. Creatures In Heaven
10. If God Loves Rock ‘n’ Roll
11. Living On The Edge
12. Claws
13. You, Still Of War
