The 25 greatest power metal albums

01. Helloween

Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part II (1988)

Very few tunes anticipate the sound of an entire subgenre as powerfully as Eagle Fly Free, the first song on Helloween's game-changing third album. Ten years after its release, musicians the world over were frantically trying to replicate its magic ingredients. 

There were the heroic, nut-squeezing pipes of self-trained vocal dynamo Michael Kiske; Kai Hansen and Michael Weikath’s intricate, high-energy twin-guitar leads; lush symphonic backing; Ingo Schwichtenberg’s explosive percussive momentum; and lyrics about birds of prey in flight. It started here. 

You may like

And it progressed in jaw-dropping ways across the length of the perfectly sequenced album, with artful, reflective arrangements like You Always Walk Alone and March Of Time contrasting with the pointed craziness of Rise And Fall and Dr. Stein. Sometime bonus track Save Us neatly ramps up the album’s quotient of fist-pumping power bangers, the singalong chorus given gravitas by a portentous, philosophical spoken-word section.

Helloween slightly over-compensated for the old stereotype of ‘humourless Germans’ with their pumpkin-headed comic-book tomfoolery and zany lyrics (see Rise And Fall’s ‘The king of Los Angeles bought himself a teddy bear / And the queen became shameless, she did it with a chair’…) but there is pleasing mischief about the way that the Keeper albums have only the appearance of a grand fantasy narrative. 

Despite appearing on many ‘best concept album’ lists, there’s no tale to speak of; the weight of the whole concept is carried by the throbbing, 13-minute title track, a windswept masterpiece bearing the full epic mother lode.

“No, we didn’t plan any concept album,” confirms Michael. “We just followed the sound and the signs we had. We only had the overall sound on our mind and we liked the tradition in having super-long tracks on the album to be played for the hippie heavy rock fans!” 

Every subsequent power metal album owes Keeper II a debt; its songs have been covered by HammerFall, Sonata Arctica, Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody, Freedom Call, Twilight Force, Vision Divine and many more. “They created the whole genre of music that’s now known as power metal.” 

This record got me into metal's melodic side

M Shadows, Avenged Sevenfold

Not my words, Carol, those are the words of big wrestler and Fozzy frontman Chris Jericho, singling out Keeper II as his “perfect album” in Metal Hammer earlier this year. “Metallica had the speed and Iron Maiden had the harmony guitars, but Helloween put it together – you had the massive double bass beat with these crazy, intricate harmonies… Michael is one of the greatest singers in history, and this is the greatest power metal album ever made.”

Avenged Sevenfold frontman M Shadows also places Keeper II in his top 10, telling Rolling Stone he first heard Kai Hansen’s classic motivational screamer I Want Out in a San Jose tattoo parlour: “I heard that song and I thought, ‘There was no way there could be any songs as crisp and clean and cool as this’… This record really got me into what was possible on the melodic side of metal. 

"You didn’t always have to be brash or vulnerable like Korn or insane like System. This is like straight-ahead, almost feels like punk rock in terms of some of the tempos. But it’s just super-smooth and it’s just amazing songwriting to me.”

The symphonic backing was key to the LP’s distinctive and grand sound, something Kai flagged up in Metal Hammer in August 1988: “We still play fast, but it’s more in a classical direction. Many overdubs in an orchestral way,” explained the guitarist. 

“We’ve used an emulator played by Tommy Hansen to simulate an orchestra at places. We’ve got a keyboard player coming on tour with us, to use whenever we think it might be useful. But we can play these songs with two guitars and they’d still sound good. There’s a lot of different directions on this album, some of the best tracks Helloween have ever done.”

In 2019, Michael Weikath credits Queen, Sparks, Uriah Heep, Rainbow, Deep Purple and ELO among the inspirations for the album’s symphonic urges, as well as an even older scene: 

“Kai Hansen had a lot of classic and opera music from his mother, like Bach and Beethoven we listened to. I have Smetana and I’m a big fan of Haydn. And I wanted to have something like an old Hollywood choir to use on some songs.”

When Keeper II emerged in August 1988, Helloween were just embarking on a dream-ticket tour with Iron Maiden, kicking off with the opening slot at the Monsters Of Rock Festival, Castle Donington, in front of 85,000 rabid headbangers.

They were on the path to glory. But when Kai said I Want Out, he wasn’t kidding; he’d left by the end of the year, to form Gamma Ray (another of Germany’s greatest bands), while changing musical fashions mitigated against Helloween’s ascendancy. But with Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part II, Helloween laid a powerful claim on music history.

Chris Chantler

Chris has been writing about heavy metal since 2000, specialising in true/cult/epic/power/trad/NWOBHM and doom metal at now-defunct extreme music magazine Terrorizer. Since joining the Metal Hammer famileh in 2010 he developed a parallel career in kids' TV, winning a Writer's Guild of Great Britain Award for BBC1 series Little Howard's Big Question as well as writing episodes of Danger Mouse, Horrible Histories, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed and The Furchester Hotel. His hobbies include drumming (slowly), exploring ancient woodland and watching ancient sitcoms.

Read more
Linkin Park/Bruce Dickinson/Bring Me The Horizon/Poppy/Zeal & Ardor
The 20 best metal albums of 2024 - as voted by the readers of Metal Hammer
Opeth 2001
“It’s a really good album, but I’m not sure it’s better than the ones that came before. You ask, ‘Why didn’t this happen sooner?’” Many consider Blackwater Park to be Opeth’s masterpiece. Opeth don’t
A collage of metal names including Ghost, Babymetal, Bloodywood, Linkin Park and more
The 50 best metal songs of 2024
Trivium
"No one else is making contemporary heavy metal on their level." Every Trivium album ranked from worst to best
Papa Roach/Employed To Serve/Nova Twins/Cradle of Filth/Electric Callboy
The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
Amon Amarth posing for a photograph in 2009
“Everyone was singing about Satan back then, but I don’t believe in Satan so I needed something that was real to me”: How Amon Amarth became the world’s favourite 21st century Viking metal berserkers
Latest in
Queen posing for a photograph in 1978
"Freddie’s ideas were off the wall and cheeky and different, and we tended to encourage them, but sometimes they were not brilliant.” Queen's Brian May reveals one of Freddie Mercury's grand ideas that got vetoed by the rest of the band
Mogwai
“The concept of cool and uncool is completely gone, which is good and bad… people are unashamedly listening to Rick Astley. You’ve got to draw a line somewhere!” Mogwai and the making of prog-curious album The Bad Fire
Adrian Smith performing with Iron Maiden in 2024
Adrian Smith names his favourite Iron Maiden song, even though it’s “awkward” to play
Robert Smith, Lauren Mayberry, Bono
How your purchase of albums by The Cure, U2, Chvrches and more on Record Store Day can help benefit children living in war zones worldwide
Cradle Of Filth performing in 2021 and Ed Sheeran in 2024
Cradle Of Filth’s singer claims Ed Sheeran tried to turn a Toys R Us into a live music venue
The Beatles in 1962
"The quality is unreal. How is this even possible to have?" Record shop owner finds 1962 Beatles' audition tape that a British label famously decided wasn't good enough to earn Lennon and McCartney's band a record deal
Latest in Features
Mogwai
“The concept of cool and uncool is completely gone, which is good and bad… people are unashamedly listening to Rick Astley. You’ve got to draw a line somewhere!” Mogwai and the making of prog-curious album The Bad Fire
The Mars Volta
“My totalitarian rule might not be cool, but at least we’ve made interesting records. At least we polarise people”: It took The Mars Volta three years and several arguments to make Noctourniquet
Ginger Wildheart headshot
"What happens next, you give everyone a hard-on and then go around the room with a bat like Al Capone?!” Ginger Wildheart's wild tales of Lemmy, AC/DC, Guns N' Roses, Cheap Trick and more
Crispian Mills and Bob Ezrin
“We spent seven months on David Gilmour’s boat and almost bankrupted ourselves. But Bob encouraged us to dream big”: How Bob Ezrin brought out the prog in Kula Shaker
Buckethead and Axl Rose onstage
Psychic tests! Pet wolves! Chicken coops! Guns N' Roses and the wild ride towards Chinese Democracy
Ne Obliviscaris
"Exul ended up being recorded at 10 different studios over two and a half years." Ne Obliviscaris and the heroic story of their fourth album