Metal Music Blog

There are few great German heavy metal bands, but two of them I rank as the most important of all time. They are Gamma Ray and Helloween, both founded by Kai Hansen, the legendary German vocalist-guitarist. In this two articles series I present those two bands and tell some latest news from the bands. Let us start with Helloween.

If you have never heard of Helloween, you must have been living under a rock. Helloween is a German power metal band, founded in Hamburg in 1982. The band was founded by guitarist-vocalist Kai Hansen, and the band released their very first album, the legendary Helloween in 1985. The album was a great success, and later on same year Helloween released their second album, Walls of Jericho. On those days Hansen found out that he has troubles playing guitar and singing at the same time and therefore he quit singing.

Helloween discovered their new singer, Michael Kiske with whom they recorded the very famous Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part 1 album. That album, as well as the second part of the album, brought the band into spotlights. During their biggest success Kai Hansen decided to leave the band. In 1989 Helloween released Live in the UK and in 1991 they released Pink Bubbles Go Apen, which was a failure. In 1993 they released Chameleon, after which the band fired Michael Kiske. In 1994 the band made a comeback with new singer, Andi Deris. They released Master of the Rings album, after which Ingo Schwichtenberg committed a suicide. In 1996 the band released The Time of the Oath which made them super-popular again. Between 1998 and 2004 Helloween continued average success and released few albums. After 2005 Helloween has continued growing their success and has released Keeper of the Seven Keys: the Legacy album. The latest album from Helloween is Gambling with the Devil, released in late 2007.

What’s up with Helloween? The band is touring now with Gamma Ray and just few days ago there played here in Finland. In their first gig in Finland they played the songs you can see in this song list. Next the band will play in Slovakia, Germany, France, Neatherlands and UK. To Japan Helloween will fly in February. I missed Helloween, just like I missed Arch Enemy and Trivium. Well, this was not a big loss because I prefer listening Helloween from the times of Michael Kiske.

Image Source: Helloween MySpace site.