Helloween – ‘Helloween’ [Album Review]

For thirty-five years, German warriors Helloween have been entertaining fans worldwide with their epic, pomp-filled power metal and their new disc, simply entitled Helloween, is their most magnificent yet. Having first teamed up for the huge Pumpkins United tour, the Germans have given fans what they have been clamouring for since then, as the seven members teamed up to record an album.

Helloween starts off with a short, dramatic intro but, before you’re warmed up, the power metal legends are wailing straight into opener “Out For Glory.” However, despite a strong opener, when these power metal forces combine for the “Fear Of The Fallen,” they demonstrate precisely why fans have been begging for them to record.

With Kai Hansen back in the Helloween fold again, this self-titled offering has everything you could want from a Helloween record. It’s got the runaway riffing, the soaring vocals, the pomp, the drama and, occasionally the purely ridiculous. Roll all of those elements into one album created by seven members and the end result shouldn’t really work but, like the brilliant “Angels” shows, a thirty-five-year career has turned these power metal titans into a band who know exactly what their fans want. With seven musicians contributing to the album, the end result is remarkably seamless. “Rise Of Chains” and “Cyanide” see the group mixing the old with new, the modern with the classic to create something that will be magical for fans of all incarnations of the German legends.

Listening to the band talk about the record, it is very clear that the “Pumpkins United Tour” reignited a fire in the collective bellies of these seven bandmates and, as the group power through the truly epic “Skyfall,” a twelve-minute finale that only an act like Helloween could pull off, you realize what a travesty for the fans and the band themselves it would have been if this mighty joining of forces had gone no further than a one-off tour.

Helloween Track Listing:

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

Run Time: 65:04
Release Date: June 18, 2021
Record Label: Nuclear Blast Records