Helloween’s fourteenth album has a bland title but good music. It reverses course from the dark tone of Seven Sinners, delivering “happy” power metal with more upbeat lyrics and a free, less burdened approach to songwriting. Apparently the band was delighted that (contra Mayan prophecies) the world didn’t end in 2012. Fair enough. I, too, was pleased by that development.
It has one of the great Helloween tracks, Weikath’s “Burning Sun”. A spellbinding fast track where the band’s constituent parts together meld together in a great fiery heat: Judas Priest riffs, Iron Maiden lead melodies, Deep Purple organs, and a Weikath/Sascha guitar solo duel that is short, ferocious, and memorable note-for-note. The lyrics (depicting a technological flight of Icarus of sorts, except the captain knows he’ll burn up) are unusually well-written for a band that usually barely writes songs in English. This is an all-time top 10 Helloween song for me.
The rest of the songs more trend toward “okay” than riveting, with further standouts being Weikath’s nostalgic “Years”, Deris/Gerstner’s upbeat anthem “Live Now!”, and Deris’s fiery, charging “Nabataea” (the Nabataeans were an ancient proto-Arab kingdom, who left behind some fascinating monuments. Deris is something of a traveller and it would not surprise me if he saw many of them firsthand).
Charlie Bauerfeind’s production is softer and easier on the ears, with less of the blatantly sampled drums that I disliked from past efforts. The guitars have a 70s Marshall sound, acting like glue over the mix rather than sticking out. All of these decisions are more or less the correct ones.
The usual filler does the usual filling. “Asshole” is a either a joke in search of a point or a point in search of a joke. “Hold Me In Your Arms” is a ballad that provokes no reaction. “Wanna Be God” is “We Will Rock You” off Temu.com, and I don’t like the original much. As always, these songs feel more like ballast and counterweight for the real songs (trifles that allow the listener time to think and reflect) rather than music that’s substantial in itself.
The final three songs are paced pretty similarly and do blur together. Gerstner’s “Church Breaks Down” has a striking anti-religion tilt breaks from the band’s past lyrical outlook, which has generally been Christian or at least Christian-inspired (there’s a large pile of songs like “Hey, Lord”, “Revelation”, “Time of the Oath”, and that’s not even considering the latter Michael Kiske material, which would often go into all-out gospel territory.)
This is a band that’s set in their ways, but their ways are good. A lingering question: why are there gas masks on the cover? They’re pumpkins. They don’t breathe.