The band[1]Sascha and Loble aside was nearly in their fifties when they wrote *Seven Sinners*. Fifty’s quite an age to be playing in a band called “Helloween”. That thought would probably occur to you during band fights and label disputes and twenty-hour layovers to Tokyo. “I am a fifty year old in Helloween.”
It could be worse—the German power metal scene has no shortage of embarrassing band names. You could be in Edguy. You could be in Gloryful. You could be in Pink Cream 69 (a certain Helloween alumnus actually was.) You could be in Brainstorm. Most direly, you could be in Custard. Encyclopedia Metallum advises that “Chris Klapper is the only original member still in Custard.”*Thank God, the others got away. I mean, obviously my thoughts and prayers are with Chris Klapper and I don’t mean to trivialize his suffering, but at least there’s not five or six people tied to those particular railway tracks, you know?
Helloween further standardize their modernistic sound on Seven Sinners. There’s only about two or three experiments. It’s the first Helloween ever to open with a slow track, the doomy “Where the Sinners Go”. “Raise the Noise” has a Jethro Tull flute solo. The closing track is quite unique, and unlike anything they’ve attempted yet. Otherwise, it’s a very strict remanation of their sound.
The album is also notably heavy: probably their most brutal yet. The only competition is The Dark Ride, which has some darker songs (particularly “Escalation 666”) but also a lot of light power metal. This album is consistently dark. There’s no comedy or silly business: the lyrics are about drug abuse, schizophrenia, and so on. Even the piano-led ballad, Deris’s “The Smile of the Sun” is piercingly bittersweet: the fragrant juice from a crushed flower.
I do find it less charming than *The Dark Ride*. It needs more texture and more light to balance the shade. It’s action-packed and heavy but fairly one-dimensional. Many songs just do not work that well, and a lot of this weaker material is tracklisted at the start. (And some of its greatest songs aren’t on the album at all!)
“Where the Sinners Go”, “Are You Metal?”, and “Who Is Mr. Madman?” are just not compelling song. Sorry. The first is slow and draggy. The others are fast but have weak hooks (“Who is Mr. Madman?” reuses the melody of “Perfect Gentlemen”, and has a spoken word intro by Bill Byford of Saxon. As always, “remember when?” is the dullest form of conversation). “World of Fantasy” is another dud. Just the blandest power metal I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a *Rabbit Don’t Come Easy* song: lots of flash and noise with emptiness at its core.
Weikath’s “Raise the Noise” and Deris’s “Long Live The King” redeem the album for me. Both tracks are ferocious and catchy riff monsters with great choruses—Bauerfeind’s relentless guitar-focused mix makes them as muscular as steroid-pumped gorillas. Deris’s vocals are in top form as well.
“The Smile of the Sun” is another excellent song, then we’re back in fillertown. Sascha’s “My Sacrifice” and Deris’s “Not Yet Today”/”Far in the Future” end the album in good order.
“Far in the Future” is just insane, the song “Who Is Mr Madman?” wishes it was. A seven minute quiet/loud game with guillotine-suspended-by-a-thread tense sections punctuated by explosive steeplechase thrash sections. There’s an energetic Jimi Hendrix-evocative riff section in the middle that evokes *Chameleon* (of all things to evoke!), along with Gamma Ray. A great song.
The bonus tracks for Japan are surprisingly incredible! This has the best bonus material of any Helloween track yet. “I’m Free” and “Aiming High” in particular are blazingly fast and memorable power metal albums. They honestly could have bumped one or two lesser album tracks, like “World of Fantasy” and “If A Mountain Could Talk”, for one or both of them.
The album is a regress from the one before it, but it’s nowhere near actively bad. I cannot get offended by *Seven Sinners* when there are actual tragedies in the world, like innocent humans playing in a band called Custard. I just wish Helloween had changed their sound by adding things instead of removing them. But it’s dark and nasty and heavy enough: sometimes Halloween candy has razorblades in it.
References
| ↑1 | Sascha and Loble aside |
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