| Helloween 'Keeper Of The Seven Keys Pt 2' I Got Confused , 1988 Lord Pale: Beginning with a rousing keyboard enhanced musical intro, Helloween kick off the album of their career. Running through a series of mid length powermetal songs with decent solos and an interesting array of breaks and slow downs, Helloween prove themselves to be Europe's answer to Iron Maiden. Just like Iron Maiden too the band manage to write 2-3 classic tracks, along with 3-4 catchy tracks, and then some rather embarrassingly poor tracks that let themselves down. Variation is the key factor in 'KOTSKP2' and Helloween's own distinctive brand of power sees interesting timing and tempo shifts along with a plethora of vocal melodies and occasional acoustic passages. Vocalist Michael Kiske provides a powerful performance in a range of styles even sounding like the mighty Bruce Dickenson on one track. The title track certainly warrants merit, a 13-minute powermetal epic with a vast amount of vocal hooks and acoustic interludes along with a huge variety of riffs on offer, it certainly retains the listener’s interest. A solid album. Favourite Tracks - Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt 2, Rise and Fall, We Got the Right Mark - 8.5/10 Helloween ‘The Dark Ride’ Nuclear Blast , 2000 Lord Pale : Helloween 2000 is a far darker , far different prospect from the last album I heard by the German powermetallers . The melodic bouncy riffs and chorus’ of the Keeper era still surfaces in tracks like ‘Mr Torture’ , ‘All Over The Nations’ , ‘Salvation’ , and ‘The Dark Ride’ but are infused with modern , thrashier , elements . A few of the tracks ‘Escalation 666’ , ‘Mirror Mirror’ , and ‘The Departed’ present a heavier , darker , and more aggressive sound with harsher vocals that bear little resemblance to the bands earlier works at all . The juxtaposition of the two styles works fairly well across the album’s course , but Helloween seem to have lost that old playful spark from their classic era probably due to the high percentage of different band members in the current incarnation . The Dark Ride is a well constructed album with a couple of ballads ‘If I Could Fly’ , and ‘Immortal’ that provide the crossover of the albums conflicting feelings to further balance the experience . The Dark Ride’s lyrical direction and artwork is also much darker than the fantasy orientated gaiety of the older material which may turn some older fans off the newer material but for me they are more like two separate entities with little than a few passing reminisces in common with each other . Overall a decent , varied , album of heavy , melodic , power/thrash . Favourite Tracks – If I Could Fly , Escalation 666 , The Dark Ride Mark – 7/10 |
 |
 |
| Official Website |
 |
 |
 |