Helloween's self-titled 16th album is the German metallers’ best album in decades

Out now: Helloween deliver the goods with ensemble line-up including returning vocalist Michael Kiske and guitarist Kai Hansen

By Malcolm Dome
( Classic Rock )
published
Helloween
(Image: © Nuclear Blast)

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It’s taken them more than 30 years, but at last Helloween have come up with an album that you can truly say is the one they should have done after 1988’s Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part II. 

This is devastating power metal, built around towering riffs and blazing melodies. It’s what Helloween did so magnificently in the 80s, before losing their way. Now, with an ensemble line-up that includes returning vocalist Michael Kiske and guitarist Kai Hansen, the band are back on the right road.

You can feel their swelling excitement as Out For The Glory bursts its seams. And things march on from there. Best Time is an ebullient fist pumper, Mass Pollution has the wackiness that was always part of their armoury, and the mammoth Skyfall is a symphony encapsulating all of the band’s finest attributes. 

It’s taken them ages, but Helloween have delivered another classic.

Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.