Artist Page: Helloween

A great live DVD, cementing how great a live band Helloween are, and documenting a handful of great live shows. It may take some getting used to as regards the songs from the old Keeper of the Seven Keys albums, as the vocals are very different here, but never mind that. The typical Helloween humor is there, both in the humorous songs and in the performances in general (for example, check out the hillarious drum solo/duet thing).

Trying to pull tricks from a hat

While not a bad album overall, this is one of the most avoidable in the Helloween canon. It seems that with a new guitar player and drummer (the latter of which would only be on the roster for this album) the band was in a slight confusion as to the songwriting. As such, singer Andy Deris picks up the pen for the most part, and those familiar with his tunes know that they're often light hearted and easy to digest. As such we lose a lot of the darkness from the previous album and get lost somewhere between being serious and being silly. The album is very often political but hard to take seriously sometimes with its sometimes cheesy factor.

Some of the songs are what we'd expect from the band such as the powerfully catchy opener, Just a Little Sign, the heavy ass Open Your Life, the blistering Hell Was Made In Heaven and the brooding Back Against The Wall. Other songs come off as just plain strange such as the closing Nothing To Say (The band says they were trying to do something Zeppelin here) and the poorly executed Don't Stop Being Crazy.

Luckily the band would be put back on track after this one. Still fun for the fans and people who want to hear some quirk, but overall mediocre.

I don't see why fans despised this album... from my point of view it's simply brilliant. The music is much more diverse here than on any Helloween album, even the lyrics have more matter.

Maybe the hardcore headbanging fans simply didn't like all the mellow parts that make this record more accessible...