by Michael McCarthy
Yesterday the German heavy metal band Helloween released their new album, Giants & Monsters.
The fascinating thing about Helloween is that they had three different singers during different periods of the bands existence of roughly 40 years and now all THREE singers are in the band at the same exact time.
Originally guitarist Kai Hansen did vocals, but he had a really rough voice that severely limited what they could do. So Hansen decided to stick to guitars and songwriting and they brought in Michael Kiske on lead vocals. And they were very, very successful. But along came the 90s and grunge. With Kiske still in the band, Helloween released two albums that veered into the alternative metal vein, Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Chameleon. If they weren’t quite alt metal, they were definitely more in the prog metal vein than Helloween’s earlier stuff, although they’ve always had some epic, 10 plus minute long songs on most of their albums.
In any case, Pink Bubbles and Chameleon were much hated at the time and they weren’t released in the United States either. Then Kiske left the band. Or maybe he was fired. I don’t remember but these things are rarely clear anyway. (Motley Crue says they fired Vince Neil. Vince Neil says he quit Motley Crue. You get the idea.). Helloween decided to get back into their metal roots and brought in singer Andi Deris to front the band.
Andi Deris was the singer of a popular metal band called Pink Cream 69. They didn’t release much, if anything, in the United States, but they were fairly big in Europe and elsewhere. The first Helloween album with Andi Deris, Master of the Rings, was seen as a true return to form and it did pretty well for them. It even ended up getting released in the United States. And with Andi Deris at the helm, Helloween soldiered on for the last 25 or so years. But several years ago is when things really got interesting: Michael Kiske rejoined the band. But rather than booting Andi Deris, the band was instead fronted by BOTH singers.
Imagine that. A band who basically released half of their albums with one singer and the other half with a different guy and then instead of making fans choose who to support and all the usual mudslinging that goes on with bands, instead Helloween decided to have two lead singers at the same time. Could you imagine Van Halen with David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar at the same time?
And then it gets even more interesting because Kai Hansen rejoined the band. So now all three of the guys who sang lead vocals in the band are in the band at the same time. Which is awesome for fans who love all of the band’s work and who just want to hear the best of the best at their shows.
I can’t think of any other band in history that had three different lead singers at different times who ended up having all three lead singers in the band at the same time eventually. Hell, I can’t even think of a band that had two lead singers who were once rivals in the band at the same time. Well, except maybe for Foreigner, who did a “Then and Now” tour with both line ups of the band several years ago. But in that case, the Foreigner singers were never really rivals.
I’m listening to Helloween’s Gods & Monsters now and it’s quite good. But this is just the first time I listen to it so I can’t exactly review it yet. Rather, I was just excited to see that all three singers are still in the band together and that they’ve released a new album. That said, even if I’m only halfway through listening to the album for the first time, I can firmly say that if you’ve ever loved any of their past albums then I think you’d like it. It kind of splits the difference between the Kiske and the Deris albums. As for Hansen, he doesn’t sing as much as the other two guys but since he has a voice that is more suitable to death metal than the sort of power metal that Helloween is most known for, it makes sense that they wouldn’t have him singing lead as much as Deris and Kiske. Hansen’s real strength is his songwriting and that’s where he really contributes to the band’s most recent work.
Here’s hoping Helloween bring their 40 Years tour to the United States and that they play Boston when they do!
Helloween: Gods and Monsters
Tracklist:
01. Giants On The Run (00:06:20)
02. Savior Of The World (00:04:14)
03. A Little Is A Little Too Much (00:03:30)
04. We Can Be Gods (00:05:10)
05. Into The Sun (00:03:39)
06. This Is Tokyo (00:04:13)
07. Universe (Gravity For Hearts) (00:08:24)
08. Hand Of God (00:03:44)
09. Under The Moonlight (00:03:07)
10. Majestic (00:08:07)
Total length: 00:50:28
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Genre: Power/Speed Metal
Band Members:
Markus Grosskopf – Bass
Michael Weikath – Guitars
Kai Hansen – Guitars , Vocals
Michael Kiske – Vocals
Andi Deris – Vocals
Sascha Gerstner – Guitars
Dani Löble – Drum
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