XXX - Three Decades in Metal

Hansen & Friends is a one-off project by famous German power metal guitarist and singer Kai Hansen who underlines his thirty years in the music industry with ten new songs he has recorded with numerous past and present collaborators. Most of them are obviously related to the most popular bands Kai Hansen has been involved in as former Helloween singer Michael Kiske and former Gamma Ray singer Ralf Scheepers make their appearances. One can also hear more surprising collaborators such as Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider and Heaven Shall Burn vocalist Marcus Bischoff to only name two specific examples.

Stylistically, this is overall rather a heavy metal record than a typical power metal effort. The different songs also have power metal, gothic metal and even melodic death metal influences depending on the numerous guest vocalists. While the record's first half is more streamlined and homogeneous, the second half is mellower and more experimental.

The lyrics mostly deal with Hansen's personal life and talk about his childhood as in ''Born Free'', the influence of greedy managers in ''Contract Song'' and the obsession with fame in ''Making Headlines''. These lyrics make this album Kai Hansen's most personal release in his career and give interesting insights into his career but they seem a little bit forced and stereotypical at times.

The shorter tracks are generally the better ones on an overall good average output. Straight heavy metal opener ''Born Free'' starts the record with a bang thanks to dynamic heavy metal riffs, tight rhythm section and gritty vocals. ''Left Behind'' is a surprisingly airy tune with slow pace and epic atmosphere close to alternative rock and gothic rock stylistics. ''All or Nothing'' is a melancholy ballad with modest symphonic rock elements. ''Follow the Sun'' ends the album with epic power metal stylistics without neglecting a healthy dose of speed and grit recalling Kai Hansen's early years.

The only longer track that is passable is mid-paced gothic metal track ''Fire and Ice'' that recalls Helloween's works about twenty years ago but goes even further with harmonious female backing vocals and sinister male growls. The slow middle section overstays its welcome quite a bit but the song compensates its length with coherent atmosphere and courageous song writing ideas. This is definitely one of the most unusual tracks ever written by Kai Hansen.

Other songs are overlong and unfocused. The worst offender in that regard is ''Enemies of Fun'' with its forced vocals and overtly repeated lyrics that sound as if Avantasia attempted to cover Iron Maiden's ''The Angel and the Gambler''. The song is only eight minutes long but feels as if it were twice as long.

In the end, Three Deacdes in Metal will please the numerous fans of Kai Hansen with familiar and new soundscapes. One has to admit that the guitarist and singer continues to experiment and explore in his career instead of repeating himself and delivering tired old tropes. One also has to admit that the material is quite hit and miss and Hansen's vocals aren't as versatile as they used to be. The final result is mostly entertaining but truly outstanding songs are missing on this release. If you like heavy and power metal, you can pick this record up for a fair price but it certainly isn't a mandatory release.

Metal has seemed to become far more conscious of its own past of late, both with the old guard that have stuck it out since the 1980s and the younger generation seeking to imitate what first put the former on the map. One could almost dub it a trend in reliving a past trend, though for Kai Hansen the act of looking to the past has been a fairly constant occurrence and has recently become all the more blatant when considering the past couple Gamma Ray albums. Now the Hamburg born prognosticator of all things power metal has recently found himself being bitten by the Avantasia bug (much as Timo Tolkki was a few years back) and has opted to form a new project built primarily off of guest musicians and vocalists in the conceptual realm.

Curiously enough, Hansen And Friends and the resulting debut XXX - Three Decades In Metal takes a very different road than the one normally trekked in this style, opting for a less fantastical concept that is largely autobiographical in nature. This approach comes with a heavy degree of credibility since a number of the heavy hitters on the list of guest musicians like Dee Snider and Roland Grapow have been toiling in the music industry for even longer than Kai himself, and it is interesting to see Hansen bringing in the guy that filled his slot in Helloween. Then again, there are points where they go a bit overboard on the voice-over dialogue and the lyrics approach the sort of corniness that Hansen hadn't really bothered with since Ralf Scheepers (who also makes an appearance on here) quit Gamma Ray.

When getting past the lyrical content, this is largely along similar lines to the stylistic direction that Kai took on To The Metal and Empire Of The Undead, albeit with a few curious twists here and there that actually justify treating this as an entirely separate project from Gamma Ray. The first half of the album definitely has a conservative heavy metal character to it, conjuring up a host of familiar past metal characters that are fairly common in power metal, albeit presented in a more bare bones fashion. "Enemies Of Fun" is arguably the most musically reductive of the pack, sticking to more of a mid-paced groove comparable to the one heard when Herman Frank coined his signature riffs to Accept's Balls The Wall, and Kai sees himself joining both Piet Sielck and Ralf Scheepers in emulating Udo Dirkschneider's gravely, AC/DC inspired screams.

It isn't until "Stranger In Time", which sees a more epic and theatrical take on things in line with the recent Gamma Ray saga of a song "Avalon", that Kai finds himself breaking away from a straight up pre-1986 approach to things. What follows could be viewed as a fair bit schizophrenic, as experimentation with some Gothic and extreme metal elements here and there that are generally outside of Kai's usual repertoire rear their heads. Nothing comes off as totally out of place, but "Fire And Ice" comes off a bit more like something that might be on an Epica single than the impact-based speed metal or trudging heavy grooves that typify Kai's usual approach. "All Of Nothing" veers a bit further off the map and listens dangerously close to the reductive pop/rock trite that infected Avantasia on The Scarecrow and is the only lone throwaway song of the pack.

This is one of those albums that's more interesting and curious than it is outright spectacular, particularly for someone who would be curious as to how Kai would sound when stepping a bit out of his element. Ultimately, the best points of this album are when he boxes his songwriting back into what he's already known for, namely the sort of high octane goodness embodied in songs like "Born Free" and "Follow The Sun", though admittedly the latter song is actually a bit more aggressive and brutish than what Kai normally goes for, in no small part due to Hansi Kursch's raunchy and occasionally tuneful vocals coming into the mix. It's not essential, but it's also not bad. Chalk it up to one man's momentary inspiration to do something else while still largely sounding like his old self.