http://www.metalstorm.net/events/news_c ... s_id=17802




High hopes once again for this, their last 2 efforts "Gambling with the Devil" & "7 Sinners" have been pretty good, so lets hope their new album continues in a similar fashion in terms of quality

Aw man, we already have releases being announced for 2013. September is the time of year when I gradually realise we're closer to the end than the beginning.

Hoping it's closer to Gambling with the Devil than to 7 Sinners.

Hopefully it's better than 7 Sinners. I just couldn't get into that album at all no matter how many times I listened to it. There's a few decent tracks/moments, but not enough for it to be a good album. Gambling With The Devil, on the other hand, was fantastic. I hope they continue on in that direction, or who knows, maybe they'll try and do some different again. Still, I'm looking forward to it, as I do with all of Helloween's releases.

No, thank you.

Oh, well. As long as lazy-ass variations on the same pointlessly generic titles, themes and lyrics, with seemingly random broken English bits work out for them commercially, no reason to make any kind of effort. Mister ___, Mrs ___, 7 ___, ____ Hell, ___ Heaven, ___ Mountain, ___ King, ____ Sun. All set. And the final touch, of course: copy-paste a phrase made really well-known by another band, for the album title.

As for the music, well... The random ripoff generator they've been using for 12 years should do just as fine as usual.

HELLISH ROCK PART II 2013
with very special guest: GAMMA RAY

Oh my. Well, they deserve each other, at this point.

Agree with this though I have to be honest and say I am looking forward to the new Trick or Treat album moreso. They capture the classic Helloween sound I prefer the most. I never felt the same about Helloween when Hansen and Kiske left though I still enjoy alot of the Deris albums, just not to tge sane degree.

My first thought was "what a totally unoriginal album name that is", its just so Helloween.

Really enjoyed 7 Sinners so hopefully this is jsut as solid.

I liked 7 Sinners but it wasn't as good as it could be. Hope that it will prove the might of Helloween.

The last 2 albums were good, but i really miss the Grapow-Kusch era, at least with those 2 songwriters you had more variety in their albums.

Same here, although I enjoyed 7 Sinners. Just catchy, solid heavy/power metal. I simply trust the album will be good though, as there's a lot of stuff by the Deris version of Helloween I like.

More Helloween?

Groovy.

7 Sinners is OK, just feels stunted and doesn't really soar that much like the best Helloween albums do, albeit having a brilliant couple of tunes in "Raise the Noise" and "Who is Mr. Madman."

And as to LegendMaker's comment, well yeah, they have a lot of stereotypes and trademarks, but I think their age merits it, and they make up for a lack of depth lyrically with very, very good musicianship and emotive, energetic songwriting. Weikath is a great guitar player and at their best, they write vibrant, catchy, lively tunes like few other bands can. And while generic in and of themselves, there aren't many bands that can sound much like Deris-era Helloween. It's a very stylized, unique sort of take on modern PM with snappy, groovy rhythms, acrobatic guitarwork and of course the inimitable vocals of Andi himself. I really love it.

Sod off, LegendMaker aka "The Storm On Everyone's "Parade!"
Gambling With The Devil was a bloody riot. 7 Sinners not so much.
I reckon this should put them back in my good graces.

Gambling was probably my surprise of the year. It sat untouched at my Alma Mater's radio station for months though because the horrible album cover and the fact that Keeper III was pretty bad. I still enjoy listening to it a lot.

7 Sinners was good, but didn't have the longevity of Gambling for me.

I like the fact that they've added some heaviness to the guitars. Overall their music still is enjoyable and often fresh even if their lyrics are stupid and their song titles do have similar themes.

Touched a nerve, have I?

Well, I'm aware that 'Gambling With the Devil' happens to be highly regarded here at MA, and seeing how they've latched on to the "hellish" theme since then (which is still comically inappropriate for the band, even with the extra distortion and emphasis on generic groovy chugging; they couldn't be credible as "bad guys" if their lives depended on it), I'm guessing it's also the case for the bulk of their current fan-base. Sorry, but it doesn't make it a good album to my ears. It's basically 'Better Than Raw 2.0', once more with less feeling, more overt gimmicks, and little to no genuine inspiration. Actually, I think 'Better' is 10 times the album 'Gambling' is, in every respect. It was already a deliberate attempt at toughing up their sound to catch up with the competition, but it didn't sound anywhere near as forced and artificial as it does now, and the songwriting quality didn't suffer from it at all, it was actually a nice "update" of their style at the time. Now that they've been doing just that for over a decade, and with less and less meat under the "see? we're metal (again) now" coating, not so much.


Oh, is that a fact? I really like Andi's vocal approach in general (the spoken parts and comical extreme metal imitations aside, of course, that's just laughably out of place), but it's only unique for those who forget about SL Coe, who is essentially to Deris what Dio was to Tony Martin. Beyond that, this so-called unique style Helloween Limited has been developing for the past decade or so is largely informed by other EuroPM bands' late 90s and early 00s runs. I actually agree with your description of their style above, except that to me it applies to the first Deris-era, ie from (parts of) 'Master of the Rings' to (parts of) 'The Dark Ride', with the 2 middle albums of this period being where they peaked, and really shone (at that time, the band was about as good as Gamma Ray itself was). Musically, they never recovered from the loss of Grapow and Kusch. I honestly think their output has been consistently mundane, gimmicky and repetitive ever since they hired the ex-Freedom Call boy and allowed Grosskopf to do more songwriting. If one finds 'Gambling' so great, then they should also love 'Rabbit don't speak English', 'The Raping of the Legacy' and '7 Wankers'. I for one don't hear much difference, sorry.

But please do have your parade, guys. I'm just declining the invitation.

This is fantastic news! Seven Sinners could have been so much better if not for the production, it had some great moments on it: Raise the Noise and Smile of the Sun where to awesome additions to their catalogue. The rest of the songs were good too, although not up to the standard set by Gambling With the Devil.

edit: That Reactor song is very cool LM, thanks for that.

The sound has been the same over the last few albums after TDR, but the difference in songwriting quality is where it counts. Gambling with the Devil just had better, heavier and more interesting songs than the albums surrounding it. Helloween can be kind of inconsistent - their recent output shows that to me anyway. I still like most of it though...except Rabbit Don't Come Easy. That was pretty lame.

I totally agree that the Grapow-Kusch era sounded different (and to me better) than the later era. I dont know, the newest Helloween sounds too artificial to me. With Grapow and Kusch they had more variety in the songwriting, Weikath stuck with his 2 songs per album as usual, same with Deris. Now they have Gerstner, who sucks at songwriting, 'Open Your Life' and 'Paint A New World' have to be the most overrated Helloween songs, 'Invisible Man' and 'Pleasure Drone' were the worst from Legacy, and dont forget 'Who Is Mr. Madman?' which is a rip-off from some 80s disco song. Grosskofp writes more, and i do enjoy his songs, the problem is he has been writing the same song since Legacy. Their new drummer doesnt write at all. Weiki sticks with his 2 songs per album, which are usually the best. This leaves Andi Deris to write the bulk of the songs, which 90% of the time are fillers. His trilogy in 'Gambling' was all filler, same in '7 Sinners'. They lost a lot when they let go Kusch and Grapow. They are masking this loss with better production and heavyness, which appeals more to younger audiences. That being said, modern Helloween aint bad, they still can produce good tunes but half their albums are just fillers.

If it's as good as the last two, I'll definitely be happy. I think I liked Gambling a bit more overall but 7 Sinners seemed to be more consistent song-wise.

All of those are some of my favorites on their respective albums.

I think that is one of the things i like a lot from Helloween. You got everyone in the band writing songs and you can easily tell who wrote which songs without checking the writing credits. From the new line up i prefer the Weiki/Grosskopf songs than the Gerstner/Deris ones.

I am a big fan of Helloween. Gambling of The Devil was thunderous and BIG FUN and 7 Sinners had some pretty good songs. I'm sure they are continuing in the same vein on this one so I'm psyched.

Gambling and 7 Sinners were good albums, I really enjoyed them. But I'd really like to hear work more akin to The Dark Ride. I always go back to that album, but I guess that isn't to likely because of the different line up. That said, I am definitely looking forward to another release.

Is Helloween mailing in performances? I don't think they are. Every album is full of surprises - and not to say all surprises are good, but inspiration can be clearly seen. I am partial to their longer numbers (Occasion Avenue, The Dark Ride, Revelation), they are better thought out and the band must delight in crafting these as a kind of showcase of their song writing ability.

“STRAIGHT OUT OF HELL” – Tracklisting revealed!

Straight to you from the headquarters: The new album will feature 13 mostly fast-paced songs – impressively multi-layered due to their different songwriters: Andi, Michael, Markus and Sascha.
Weikath: “STRAIGHT OUT OF HELL is the consequent development of the two albums before. The new songs are a continuation of the “7 Sinners” directives, only less doom-bound and noticeably more positive. These songs will kick even the laziest listener’s ass.” The best example of HELLOWEEN’s ability to think outside the box of metal cliché is the first single from STRAIGHT OUT OF HELL: “Nabataea”. The legendary kingdom and its secret capital Petra – hidden behind cliff scenery and only discovered at the beginning of the 20th century – are the origin of many myths and legends. “Nabataea” is the perfect shape of great music to come and will deliver an epic video clip, yet to be shot. Apart from the standard album,
there will be a limited edition featuring premium packaging and two bonus tracks: “Another Shot of Life” and a Hammond version of “Burning Sun” in memory of Deep Purple’s recently deceased organ player Jon Lord.

TRACKLISTING “STRAIGHT OUT OF HELL”

1. Nabataea – 7:03
2. World of War – 4:56
3. Live Now! – 3:10
4. Far from the Stars – 4:41
5. Burning Sun – 5:33
6. Waiting for the Thunder – 3:53
7. Hold me in your Arms – 5:10
8. Wanna be God – 2:02
9. Straight out of Hell – 4:33
10. Asshole – 4:09
11. Years – 4:22
12. Make Fire Catch the Fly – 4:22
13. Church Breaks Down – 6:06

BONUS TRACKS LIMITED EDITION

14. Another Shot of Life
15. Burning Sun (Hammond version) dedicated to Jon Lord

Halloween is in October.

Yeah I really liked 7 Sinners. This is supposed to be a bit more upbeat but I can't say 7 Sinners is very dark.

Huh, never thought I'd see Helloween and doom in the same sentence...

Boy, power metal bands sure are using a lot of curse words lately between this and "Shitload of Money" off of the last Sonata Arctica.

With awesome old-timers like this and Voivod, 2013 will be off to a splendid start. Can't wait!

Sonata have a song called "Shitload of Money"?

But yeah, it's kinda silly. Curse words can be used effectively when put in the right hands (early 'tallica, anyone?), but in power metal it usually sounds, well, cheesy and more than a bit forced.

Yeah, not sure what's wrong with Open Your Life -- that's a high point of the CD, IMO.

I know a lot of people talk about Helloween losing something when Uli and Roland left.But since that happened,have Grapow or Kusch really come up with anything truly great?The first Masterplan CD was a pleasant surprise,but didn't knock my socks off like Better Than Raw did.

I don't really care about Masterplan or whatever. But it's pretty obvious that Helloween did lose two very unique players after Grapow and Kusch left the band. Those two were probably the most skilled musicians to play in Helloween, and then the band proceeded to replace them with two rather generic power metal musicians (not exactly the wisest move in history).

I agree. It doesn't matter if Masterplan released killer albums or not. The thing is this 2 guys can write 2-3 songs in each Helloween album, and they will be better songs than whatever rip-off song Gerstner writes, and the fillers Andi Deris has been writing since Rabbit Don't Come Easy. Hell, even Markus 'the king of b-sides' Grosskopf is a better songwriter.

Just listened to the Burning Sun track, reminds me of The Saints (Gambling with the Devil).

Burning Sun is a great track. Much better than anything from the mediocre 7 Sinners.

any links?