An album where I fear to tread. Where I chop and change on whether it’s good or not.
I will say this: it feels like an accomplishment that I enjoy Helloween’s 2005 two-CD opus as much as I do, because the band seemingly did not want me to. It puts many barriers between the music and the listener. Such as the first thing you notice about it: its title.
Yes, this is Helloween’s *Bat out of Hell 3*. Helloween’s *Operation Mindcrime 2.* One of *those* albums. The band, a solid 18 years removed from their classic *Keeper* golden years (and missing three out of the five musicians that made those years possible), is trying to *title* their way to a comeback. Ew. Gross.
They swing hard at the idea, sparing no expense. On a technical level, this is the best Helloween album ever made. Witness the greatest production work of Charlie Bauerfeind’s career—everything loud and punchy and precise, treble stropped sharp, bass pelagic-deep, no trace of mud or fizz anywhere. There’s an attentiveness to sonic equality—to getting all the players and registers on the same page—that’s very unusual, but effectively realized. Even Grosskopf’s basslines bounce out at you so clearly that a sharp-eared bassist could probably tab out all thirteen tracks on their second listen. The album’s sonics are rich and lush and verge on overvoluptuous, but it thrills with its decadence. It feels like all the instruments had breast implants and buccal fat removal surgery, if that makes sense.
And the musicians themselves are on fire (not literally—as *Mythbusters* confirmed, power metal musicians are non-flammable). The first stable lineup Helloween had in years (Deris/Weikath/Gerstner/Grosskopf/Loble) simply clicks in a way *Rabbit Don’t Come Easy*‘s transitional roster couldn’t—in particular, new drummer Dani Loble proves to be an astonishing discovery, finding little grooves and fills everywhere in the music and pounding them into your skull. After Uli Kusch, he’s my second favorite drummer to ever play in this band (with apologies to Ingo, who was fast and aggressive for 1985 but a little simplistic by modern standards).
The album sounds like a million deutschmarks. No complaints there.
But…it’s simply not as good as *Keeper of the Seven Keys* part *I* and *II*. Yes, that’s true of most albums, and I don’t normally draw the comparison. But when you call your album *Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy*, you’re shoving the barrel of that particular shotgun into your mouth and making duck noises.
Why do it? Why attempt the impossible—releasing a third (technically third and fourth, considering the 2nd disk) *Keeper* album, after nearly two decades? The 80s Helloween albums are truly special. And they relied on the soaring vocals of Michael Kiske and the brilliant songwriting of Kai Hansen, neither of whom are in the room. The energy roused by a bunch of eighteen year olds from Hamburg cannot be summoned at will by forty year old men, only two of whom were in the band when it was active.
Worse, the songs are alarmingly spotty. Weak, knock-kneed, and confused. We get Michael Weikath’s foray into KISS style cock-rock with “Get it Up”, Andi Deris’s emptyheaded rewrite of “Dr Stein” entitled “Mrs God”, and uninteresting album filler like Weikath’s “Do You Know What You Are Fighting For” and Gerstner’s “The Invisible Man” that I have to actively fight not to skip over.
And don’t get me started on the “epic” that begins each disc. Both are so bloated you could swing a battleaxe through their skinniest part and not hit bone.
In general, the album is strongest as a glittery modern Nuclear Blast style power metal album, similar to the Finnish bands popular at the time (Sonata Arctica, Celesty, Dreamtale, and such). It is weakest when viewed as a continuation of classic Helloween. It is the latter comparison that the band forces you to make, over and over. Honestly, I dislike the whole idea of ever returning to Keeper. It’s not like this is some fascinating, rich fantasy concept. The whole thing’s at worst (or best?) meaningless, and at best (or worst?) a Stryper-lite fantasy parable about Christianity, as written by teenaged German boys who knew many words, and even a couple that were in English.
There are some bits and pieces of classic Helloween, but it’s done in a careless mocking way that smacks of persiflage. Sascha Gerstner’s “Silent Rain” has a chorus melody nearly identical to “Eagle Fly Free”, but the lyrics are about child molestation. Why do that? This is meant as a joke? “You know what sucks about ‘Eagle Fly Free’? No child molestation” is a thought I cannot imagine anyone ever having.
The songs hit double-digit numbers of minutes (for the first time since 1988), but don’t do much good with it. “King of a Thousand Years” is boring. “Occasion Avenue” opens with a recap of classic Helloween songs, cementing the feeling that Helloween is trying to bully their way unearned into classic stature (“Forget that stuff, here’s the real deal!”). And although the song has a catchy chorus and some interesting parts, it doesn’t earn its length. The goal seems to have been to write a very, very long song, like classic Helloween, filling the empty space with whatever will fill it.
Andi Deris is an overwhelming presence, writing easily 80% of the material. He gives us album highlights “Come Alive”, and “The Shade in the Shadow”—poppy modern power metal songs that don’t sound like anything on either real *Keeper* LP but are of high quality—and “Occasion Avenue” is worth venturing down, through you could skip over about 6 minutes in the middle. He’s also behind “Mrs God”, and the lifeless ballad “Light the Universe”. Michael Weikath is the most active point of contact with 80s Helloween (Grosskopf was also in the band then, but he didn’t write songs until the 90s), but he contributes a generic fast song “Born on Judgment Day” that could have been written by anyone. His other two songs (“Do You Know What You Are Fighting For” and “Get It Up”) are the worst things the album has to offer.
*Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy* direly wants to be more than it is. It’s trying to bully its way into classic status, in a way that’s undignified. Like trying to offer St Peter a blowjob to get into heaven. Does that work? Has anyone tried it? The Bible says the sheep will be separated from the goats. Does that include throat goats?
Imagine if David Gilmour reformed “Pink Floyd” with a mixture of new musicians and AI and released *The Even Darker Side of the Moon*. Would you take it seriously? Of course not. It would be ludicrous. But it would probably sell copies, wouldn’t it?
*Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Beggacy* has been tried before, and will be tried again, over and over, long after modern life has Fedex-mailed us all into our coffins. Sometimes these sorts of forced comebacks happen at a label’s behest, but other times it’s the band themselves, because they sense something dark in the world’s elaborately turning gears. They sense that they do not matter. That music does not matter. What matters is the *brand*. The brand is the valuable thing that must be fought for. That’s why we get farcical situations—multiple competing versions of RATT and Queensryche and LA Guns roaming the land, suing each other for copyright infringement. You know why they call them brands? Because they used to put them on cattle.
Long ago, on *Keeper of the Seven Keys I* Kai Hansen wrote “Future World”. It opened with a fussy but charming little pentatonic melody, notes staccato palm-muted. It sounded like a man trying to pick a lock. “We all live in happiness! / our life is full of joy! / We say the word “tomorrow” without fear!” Yeah, there was irony to it—it’s like a recruitment anthem for a cult—but I always responded to the song’s reaching, defiant optimism.
In 2005, that optimism seemed so far away. Very hard to summon (or even remember). We’d seen the truth staring like a skull: there is no Future World. There isn’t even a Present World. There’s only a Past World, to be returned to again and again, a well brimming with nostalgic memories in a dry and arid desert. The past is our one source of meaning. There can never be anything new. Just pastiches of the old. Just *Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 3* and *The Simpsons season 34* and skeletonized boomers strumming guitars and bringing back ghosts, even though they seem halfway there themselves. Maybe when you sleep in the desert of Now, you dream of wide and blue oceans, echoing the face of the sky into the deep horizon. But it’s not real. Just stick to the well—even though less and less water comes up with every pull, even though it’s dark with pollution, it’s what we have and it’s all we have. Don’t leave the well. There’s nowhere else.
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