Helloween: A Primer

It's time to focus on a band that hasn't been getting nearly as much love on this blog as it deserves. The German power metal band Helloween helped invent the genre as an offshoot of speed metal in the 80s, and they have been assiduously pretending the 80s never ended ever since. While they rock as hard or fast as most of their descendants (DragonForce excepted), the most distinctive thing about Helloween is their ability to never take themselves too seriously and accept that, at heart, power metal is kind of ridiculous. While never straying into affectionate parody territory like Dream Evil, Helloween knows how to milk the "narm" factor for all it's worth, while still writing some top-notch metal. Including their new album Straight Out of Hell, they have 16 albums, and unlike so many other bands from the 80s, their recent ones don't suck!

Walls of Jericho (1985) ★★★☆☆

Helloween's first album dates back to before they signed Michael Kiske; their then-guitarist Kai Hansen does the vocals and consequently Walls of Jericho sounds more like a Gamma Ray album. It's more speed metal than true power metal, with more of the classically German focus on aggression, power, and, of course, high tempos. It's kind of repetitive and not as definitively power metal as later albums, as Hansen and the whole band were not at the top of their respective games yet, and it succeeds more as classic metal than power metal. Still, it has some decent songs like "Walls of Jericho / Ride the Sky" and "Murderer". Others like "Starlight", "Gorgar", and "Heavy Metal (Is the Law)" preface Helloween's future inability to take themselves totally seriously.

Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part I (1987) ★★★★★

Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part I is possibly the defining album of power metal. With new singer Michael Kiske and a more heroic, melodic sound that would become the foundation for the style of thousands of bands to come, this album is a classic. True, it is fairly short with only six full-length songs, and the lyrics are still getting there. Some songs like "A Little Time", and "I'm Alive" stay close to the classic metal themes of individuality and freedom, "Future World" is irresistible in its ridiculous saccharine hyperoptimism, and "A Tale That Wasn't Right" is a traditionally sappy ballad of heartache. The more esoteric "Twilight of the Gods", on the other hand, gets much more fantastical and interesting, and the thirteen-minute epic "Halloween" remains one of their best songs to this day. And besides the lyrics, Keeper of the Seven Keys is great simply for its status as truly prototypical power metal, predating all the stylistic and genre shifts to come. If it sounds cliche, it's because virtually all power metal to come was influenced by it. Each of the full-length songs is strong and a classic in its own right. For all intents and purposes, this is Helloween's first album.

Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part II (1988) ★★★★★

Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part II largely continues the work of defining the genre of power metal that its predecessor started, so it's hard to fault it for not sounding too different. It's perhaps a bit more on the zany side, with the lighthearted "Rise and Fall" and a whimsical homage to Frankenstein, "Dr. Stein". "Eagle Fly Free", "You Always Walk Alone", and "I Want Out" are more power metal classics about freedom and individuality (again, from before their straightforward style and lyrical themes became cliché). "Keeper of the Seven Keys", another epic, is one of Helloween's more progressive works, and possibly their best song with Kiske. I suspect it helped establish the lyrical center of power metal around the fantastical themes that later bands like Blind Guardian and Rhapsody of Fire would run with. Keeper of the Seven Keys could be considered, overall, a double album, and together the two parts define "classic" Helloween and form the blueprint for the storm of power metal to come.

Pink Bubbles Go Ape (1991) ★★☆☆☆

I know what you're thinking: "Pink Bubbles Go Ape? What kind of a name is that for a metal album?" Which is what I and every other Helloween fan have been wondering. In this and the next album, Michael Kiske started leading Helloween away from their usual fantastical subject matter and into the weird. In addition, guitarist Kai Hansen left the band in 1989 to form Gamma Ray, and Pink Bubbles suffers noticeably from the lack of his songwriting abilities. Songs like the short intro track, "Back on the Streets", "Your Turn", and "Heavy Metal Hamsters"(!?) go off the deep end from weird to just dumb. The riffs and melodies on "Goin' Home" or "I'm Doin' Fine, Crazy Man" are similarly weak. "Mankind" seems to be intended as another epic and is arguably one of the better songs on the album, but mostly falls flat compared to its precedent. And, unfortunately, it would all get even worse on the next album...

Chameleon (1993) ★☆☆☆☆

This much-maligned album is the culmination of the non-metal direction Kiske led Helloween in before his dismissal. The first track, "First Time", is actually not too bad, almost as if to reassure loyal fans, but then "When the Sinner" sounds more like some kind of guitar-infused big band dance song than power metal (see also "Music"). The genre of songs like "I Don't Wanna Cry No More", "Windmill", or "In the Night" can't be considered metal in any way, and even songs in a more conventional vein like "Revolution Now" seem dead and aimless even compared with Pink Bubbles Go Ape. I'm not sure exactly what musical movement Chameleon is trying to blend in with, but it's really only valuable to Helloween fans for historical purposes.

Master of the Rings (1994) ★★★★☆

Due to the creative differences between Kiske and the rest of the band made increasingly obvious by the last two albums, they replaced him with Andi Deris, their current vocalist, for Master of the Rings. The result, while still more musically adventurous than the Keeper of the Seven Keys albums, avoids the pitfalls of the last two albums with Kiske. Somewhat more intense than either Keeper album, it seems to inject a bit of the sound of Walls of Jericho into Helloween's classic sound. (See opening track, pseudo-speed-metal powerhouse "Sole Survivor") "Where the Rain Grows" is another classic tune with a great solo and amazing, really powerful vocal performance by Deris. "Perfect Gentleman" is a hilarious monologue from a delusionally narcissistic, self-proclaimed Casanova and one of Helloween's classic songs. "The Game Is On" seems to have been a social commentary on video games, but with its now-dated concerns and Game Boy-esque beeping it comes across as more of a nostalgic tribute to a bygone age of gaming. Master of the Rings isn't Helloween's best album, but it is a solid, memorable release that definitely recovers the ground lost by the last two.

The Time of the Oath (1996) ★★★☆☆

Despite its appearing to be a return to the fantastical stylings of Keeper of the Seven Keys, The Time of the Oath is the beginning of Helloween's stylistic shift from "classic" to "modern". Like so many mid-90s power metal albums, it is rather awkward, but the signs of progress are evident. Songs like "We Burn" and "Before the War" draw back from their speed metal origins to sharpen and harden their sound into a darker, more intense one that would come to be more definitive of their modern style. "Steel Tormentor" even evokes a bit of Judas Priest, and "Wake Up the Mountain" almost seems to look forward to 7 Sinners. Again, there are a few ballads: "If I Knew" and "Forever and One", a strong, sad one similar to "A Tale That Wasn't Right" Significantly, there are two new epics, "Mission Motherland" and "The Time of the Oath", both of them excellent and arguably the first since "Keeper of the Seven Keys". And the catchy but head-scratching "Anything My Mama Don't Like" continues Helloween's tendency to write bad-weird songs. The Time of the Oath and its next few successors constitute Helloween's least remarkable period, in my view, between their "classic" sound and their current, more refined one, but it's still a good, if not groundbreaking, power metal album.

Better than Raw (1998) ★★★☆☆

Better than Raw is something of a transitionary piece in Helloween's history, in which they throw a bunch of "raw" musical ideas into a cauldron and stir it up to see what will come out. The first two songs, "Push" and "Falling Higher", are a metallic one-two punch and probably their heaviest songs to this point. From there, Better Than Raw seems to go in every possible direction at once. The good: this album is at is best with some of the more progressive songs, like "Revelation", "Midnight Sun", and the ballad "Time" (which seems strangely reminiscent of Aerosmith's "Dream On" at times). The bad: "I Can", however, is fairly bland and adds little to the mix, and "Don't Spit on my Mind" and "Handful of Pain" seem like steps backward in both speed and power, more like subpar hard rock. And the weird: "Lavdate Dominvm" comes from nowhere, is sung entirely in Latin, and sounds so upbeat as to almost be jingle material. "Hey Lord!" almost seems to be channeling some Bon Jovi. Lots of musical elements that would become distinctives of later Helloween, for better or for worse, are visible here in their infancy.

Metal Jukebox (1999) ★★★★☆

This is an album of covers of Helloween's various musical influences, and as the name suggests is probably their most eclectic. As such, it has excellent covers of other German metal bands ("He's a Woman, She's a Man"), Swedish pop covers that work bizarrely well ("Lay All Your Love On Me"), and nonsensical yodeling ("Hocus Pocus"). The cross-genre ones are honestly the best, like "All My Loving" with furious 3-time double-bass drumming. The more progressive-rock cover of "Space Oddity" is also excellent. Not being terribly familiar with any of the originals, I'm not the best judge of this cover album, but it's pretty enjoyable on its own terms, in part because of its total randomness and good (borrowed) songwriting.

The Dark Ride (2000) ★★★★☆

Refining (or "cooking") the new direction embodied in Better Than Raw and not containing any covers, The Dark Ride was a decisive step in Helloween's stylistic shift from their classic fantastical sound to their modern, "darker and edgier" one. "Mr. Torture" mostly reflects this in its darker subject matter and heavy, "machine gun" strummed verses; "Mirror, Mirror" sounds almost brooding, and "Madness of the Crowds" has a constantly ascending refrain melody shared between the guitar and bass that sounds like an aural representation of going insane. "All Over the Nations", "Salvation", and the chorus of "Mr. Torture" are cleaner and more like a straight evolution of Helloween's "classic" sound. Also of note are "The Departed (Sun Is Going Down)" for its memorable chorus and the title track, which is a fairly good eight-minute epic. "If I Could Fly" walks a tightrope over the dark and light sides of this album, with the guitar and keyboard sharing the melodic line. Overall, The Dark Ride isn't terribly special on its own, but it does mark an important turning point in Helloween's history.

Rabbit Don't Come Easy (2003) ★★☆☆☆

Musically, Rabbit Don't Come Easy is another, shall we say, "eccentric mess" like Chameleon, though more of a mixed bag than a failure. Parts of it continue the refinement that The Dark Ride began as seen on excellent songs like "Open Your Life", "Listen to the Flies" and "Liar", the latter possibly being their darkest song of any album except 7 Sinners. "Just a Little Sign" is extremely strong musically, but the lyrics, repetitive and about trying to pick up a girl at a metal show, ruin it for me. Others, like the bizarre, rambling "Nothing to Say", are possibly some of the worst from the Deris era, and "Don't Stop Being Crazy" or "The Tune" are just bland. Some good songs on this album, but probably the weakest of the "modern" Helloween.

Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy (2005) ★★★★★

After all the overly dark, offbeat, or just plain weird detours of previous albums, The Legacy is, as the name suggests, the spiritual successor to the classic Keeper of the Seven Keys albums and a great combination of "old" and "new" Helloween. By far the best example of this is "King for a 1000 [sic] Years", which is every bit the epic "Halloween" and "Keeper of the Seven Keys" were and then some, benefitting considerably from more modern, "metallic"-sounding production. It's progressive power metal at its finest, with not a dull moment in its fourteen minutes. This whole album in general has a decidedly grandiose, progressive bent, with another slightly shorter and more laid-back epic, "Occasion Avenue", at the beginning of the second disc. (Did I mention it's a double album?) The album has plenty of songs that sound like Helloween rethinking their past: "Invisible Man" harkens back to The Dark Ride and "King for a 1000 Years", "Born on Judgment Day", and "My Life For One More Day" are the closest Helloween has come to recapturing the epic glory of the original Keeper of the Seven Keys albums. The more banal "Come Alive" sounds most like Chameleon, unfortunately. But there are others that seem to look into the future, like "Occasion Avenue" or "Shade in the Shadow". There are some misses, like "Come Alive" or "Mrs. God", which definitely falls under "just plain weird", but on an album of this size there is plenty to enjoy.

Gambling with the Devil (2007) ★★★★★

With a tone more similar to The Dark Ride, Gambling with the Devil is a strong shift from Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy's throwback "classic" sound to Helloween's current, more modern and serious one, perhaps in response to fans tired of the silliness of albums like Rabbit Don't Come Easy. (That sentence may have set my record for album title dropping) This new sound is exemplified in songs that surpass any of their previous work in intensity, like the fast and furious opening track, "Kill It", which has vocals harsh enough to almost be screams and a 3-time "zigzag" riff. "Paint a New World" is similarly impassioned. On the other hand, more melodic songs like "The Saints" and "Final Fortune" provide a nice balance; "As Long As I Fall" is a quasi-ballad with keyboard/piano and the guitars sharing the spotlight equally, somewhat like "If I Could Fly" from three albums ago. "Fallen to Pieces" and "Heaven Tells No Lies" are like condensed versions of the epics of previous albums with more interesting structure; "Fallen to Pieces" in particular could almost qualify as progressive metal. Overall, Gambling with the Devil successfully reestablished Helloween's dominance of the European power metal scene and revitalized their sound, and for that I'd say it's an excellent album.

Unarmed (2010) ★★★★★

Another experiment in the vein of Metal Jukebox, Unarmed is a collection of rerecordings of classic Helloween songs in a variety of non-metal genres that would, ironically, make Michael Kiske proud. (Even with Andi Deris singing many of his best songs) Some are just hilarious; "Dr. Stein" is jazzy with a prominent saxophone, "I Want Out" has a children's choir, and the ridiculous, lilting melody of "Perfect Gentlemen" honestly seems to fit the lyrics better than the original power metal style. This would be a terrible experiment in the vein of Chameleon if these were original songs and Helloween was serious about the stylistic change, but since these are tried and proven songs, it's more of an alternate look at the band's history. Other songs, like "If I Could Fly", "Forever and One", and "Fallen to Pieces" are in more of a symphonic rock style and are legitimately awesome. There is no better example of this than "The Keeper's Trilogy", a 17-minute medley of "Halloween", "Keeper of the Seven Keys", and "King for a 1000 Years" performed with a choir and 70-piece orchestra, which is possibly Helloween's best song ever. Unarmed is a delightfully strange album and a truly unique recomposition of some of the band's best work, possibly worth getting for "The Keeper's Trilogy" alone.

7 Sinners (2010) ★★★★★

In contrast to Unarmed, Helloween's penultimate album is their darkest and heaviest yet, continuing the trend started in Gambling with the Devil. It follows an interesting songwriting approach in which each song was written solely by one member of the band, providing an interesting mix of styles, all of them unrelentingly heavy, in sharp contrast to Unarmed. (Perhaps as a visual contrast, the cover features just about every kind of sharp object imaginable) Six songs were written by Deris; "Are You Metal?" and "Long Live the King" are both extremely fast, intense songs about the genre itself, "Where the Sinners Go" is slower and somewhat of a snarling anthem. More interestingly "Far in the Future", is a very strong semi-epic at nearly 8 minutes and "Smile of the Sun" manages to harness the slow pacing and tenderness of a ballad with none of the sappiness. The other band members wrote fewer songs, but perhaps because of this they tend to be stronger and more creative. By guitarist Sascha Gerstner, the extremely dark song "Who Is Mr. Madman?" is a sequel to "Perfect Gentleman" about the gentle/madman's current state of insanity. "Raise the Noise" by second guitarist Michael Weikath has more of a "classic" power metal sound and a flute solo that works bizarrely well. "World of Fantasy" by the bassist Markus Grosskopf is interesting in that it also has more of a "retro" sound, except that pitch-wise Deris' vocals stay in the midrange for pretty much the entire song. Overall, 7 Sinners is excellent but a little one-dimensional and focused on being as "metal" as possible (which is a mixed blessing). The muddy production doesn't help with this and is a casualty of the "loudness wars"; arguably it's the biggest thing holding these otherwise awesome songs back.

Straight Out of Hell (2013) ★★★★☆

With 7 Sinners acting as the culmination of Helloween's move towards a dark, heavy sound, their newest album Straight out of Hell sounds relatively laid-back despite being one of their heaviest to date. Though keeping the super-heavy texture and production of 7 Sinners, it tends to be lighter in mood, turning back to the more whimsical tone of their earlier albums. So "World of War" has a big, symphonic, bombastic sound to it that sounds pretty classic, over detuned, rapidly chugging guitar riffs, an interesting blend of old and new. "Far From the Stars" and "Waiting for the Thunder", in addition to ditching much of the abrasiveness of 7 Sinners, seem to be channeling some Stratovarius (but with less keyboard), and "Burning Sun" almost seems like the continuation of something from Keeper of the Seven Keys. There is also progress. The title track is another excellent merger of Helloween's melodic and heavy sides, and the opening song, "Nabataea", is a very strong 7-minute epic. I found myself humming its pre-final-chorus bridge when I realized why it was so catchy: it's the chorus melody from "Everytime We Touch" (also by a German artist...coincidence?). Straight Out of Hell may not be Helloween's top album from their "modern" period (that would probably be either Gambling with the Devil or Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy). Though it introduces (or, often, reintroduces) some interesting ideas, it seems like a bit of a toned-down version of 7 Sinners. (Its similarly overcompressed production doesn't help with this) Not my first recommendation for recent Helloween, but a  pretty good album.

Sennheiser HD800s: Pure Sonic Perfection

I used to poke fun at people who would pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of headphones (Bose Triports; this was before Beats became huge). I feel like after having spent half my bonus on these things, I have forfeited that right. They have come.

This is how listening on the HD800s makes me feel.

The HD800s have been Sennheiser's flagship headphones since 2008, replacing the HD650s (previously reviewed here), and are branded as "the world's finest headphones". Though my extremely high expectations from wanting these headphones for years have probably colored my impressions, I'm inclined to agree with this assessment.

The HD800s are the result of Sennheiser basically telling its top engineers, "make the best-sounding headphones you possibly can, cost is no object". They have been designed for perfection from the ground up, bearing no resemblance to any of Sennheiser's lesser headphone lines (except the HD700, which came and is intentionally styled after them) or, indeed, any other headphone in existence. Sennheiser's design is normally sleek and ultramodern, but the HD800s can only be described as "futuristic". Though most of the design is plastic except for the driver housings and part of the band, they feel like the very opposite of cheap. Everything fits together precisely.

It's to be expected that a headphone this expensive should be extremely wearable (my biggest concern with the Audeze LCD-2), and this is definitely true of the HD800. The pads are not velour like I was expecting from the HD555 and HD650, but some kind of cushy foam (apparently microfiber fabric) that is extremely comfortable and provides a nice acoustic seal around the enormous earcups. They have the same split-pad design on the band as the HD650s, but much less caliper pressure. As a result, they are about as comfortable as the Audio Technica ATH-AD700s, feeling like a pillow on the head, but with less worry about them slipping down. (Though because of the low pressure they feel like they could slip forward or backward if I tilt my head) When I wear them, I don't want to take them off, even without any sound.

Unlike most headphones, the HD800s make little effort to hide the fact that they are basically small speaker cones positioned over your ears. The HD5x8 line has its "eargonomic acoustic refinement" reflector design to improve their imaging; the HD800s simply position the drivers farther away from the ears and at an angle so that sound enters the heads as naturally as if it were coming from the "real world". The result is by far the best, most lifelike imaging I've ever heard.

Speaking of drivers, the HD800s also reflect a truly unique driver design. Larger drivers produce better sound, especially at the low end, but they also allow for more harmonic distortion, especially in the middle which is allowed to oscillate freely. Sennheiser's solution was to give it a patented ring-shaped driver, which allows for much greater control of the driver surface and therefore allows the driver to be the biggest of any dynamic headphone, 56mm, with a frequency range of 8 Hz to 50 kHz.

So, with all of this precision German engineering, how do they sound? In a word: perfect. Contrary to my last review, I have mostly been preferring the HD650s for their overall balanced sound and strong low end, good for metal. But after hearing the HD800s, I could swear someone snuck into my apartment and replaced them with cheap knockoffs. The difference is barely tangible, but impossible to ignore.

The HD800s' frequency response is the most neutral and even I have ever heard (except possibly some electrostatics at a headphone meet). As the chart below shows, the HD650 has a bit of a bass "hump" around 100 Hz before dropping off at the extreme low end, and is also a bit lacking in treble performance (I was familiar with that; they didn't sound bright like the Beyerdynamic DT990s do). The HD800 evens out all of these discrepancies. No frequencies dominate or get left out; everything is perfectly balanced. The bass is strong and clear, but not overpowered; the treble "sparkles" but not to a distracting, sibilant degree like the DT990s; the mids, as expected from any Sennheiser headphones worth their salt, sound great.

And, of course, the transparency. The enormous ring-shaped transducers result in vanishingly low harmonic distortion. Switching between them and the HD650s, I could actually sense the "veil" that seemed to be in front of the latters' sound, fuzzing everything out almost imperceptibly. With the HD800s, that veil is gone. Of the sonic impurity that remains, I think more is due to the recording process (which was probably done with lesser headphones) than my amp. These headphones have no personality. You don't "hear" them; you only hear your music. And, of course, the other elements of your signal chain; I am planning to build a β22, a solid-state headphone amp renowned for its transparency, in the coming months as the perfect companion. Since I heard my first pair of "nice" headphones four years ago, my goal has been a sound system that just gets out of the way and puts no barriers between me and my music. In the HD800s, that goal has been realized. Worth it.

The Afterman: Descension

The second part of Coheed and Cambria's two-part album, The Afterman, has arrived (or perhaps descended). And it is really good.

One of the biggest strengths of Ascension was how it so brilliantly wrapped so many different ideas and genres into one semicoherent package that thrilled with its constant variety and consistently managed to stay both fascinating and accessible. The exact same could be said of Descension, which is every bit the second half of the cycle. Virtually every song explores a different musical niche, from progressive metal ("Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant" or "Gravity's Union") to electropop/big band ("Number City") to indie rock ("Iron Fist"), effectively keeping the album from ever sounding dry or tired. By tightly juxtaposing all of these musical ideas, this 43-minute album manages to convey almost as much of a sense of musical exploration and adventure as an 80-minute Dream Theater album.

With an album this diverse, there isn't much to do except go through the individual tracks; this album is definitely more reductionist (enjoy each song on its own) than focused on connecting the songs into one musical line of thought.

"Pretelethal": Ethereal and spacey, beginning with strumming that almost sounds like a harp. Like the love child of Porcupine Tree and Muse, especially during the heavier, crashing chorus. A more fleshed-out prelude track than "The Hollow" was. The end has a callback to "Goodnight, Fair Lady" in the SFX.

"Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant": Features some of the heaviest-sounding acoustic guitarwork I've ever heard in the verses; this is C&C at their most Dream Theater-like, but with more mainstream melodic sensibilities instead of epic, rambling instrumental wankery.

"The Hard Sell": Single bait; more hard rock-like. Simpler than "Sentry the Defiant", but with a strong, anthemic chorus and some cool background guitar riffing touches. Claudio's vocal performance is passionate, alternately pleading and snarling; probably the best on the album.

"Number City": Pretty much electronic pop-rock music with "robotic" vocals and much more lighthearted rock touches than the last two songs. There are also synthesized horns, "city" sound effects, and other flourishes that continue to get crazier throughout. Definitely one of C&C's less conventional (and poppiest) songs; crazy-fun.

"Gravity's Union": Another progressive metal/hard rock track. Almost seven minutes in length, but doesn't try to cram in every musical idea and the kitchen sink like "Domino the Destitute" did, so it feels longer. Decent song, but slow-paced and not quite as exciting as the other heavy tracks.

"Away We Go": Possibly their most melodic work of pop-rock yet, kind of like a slower "Blood Red Summer" with some musical allusions to "Goodnight, Fair Lady" mixed in. It's very hard to feel angry or sad while listening to this.

"Iron Fist": Surprisingly, resembles indie rock, with a raw-sounding mix highly centered around the laid-back drumming and bass guitar.

"Dark Side of Me": Very poppy, somewhat hard alternative rock. Has more of a pop focus on the powerful chorus. Not terribly elaborate, but one of my favorites of the album.

"2's My Favorite 1": A fairly conventional, pop-rock song that draws the double album to a satisfying, major-key conclusion. After the main song fades out at around 3:30, there is a brief, quiet outro that calls back to "The Hollow".

Overall, The Afterman: Descension is, like its predecessor, an album of very strong, relatively distinct songs  with enough compositional and musical coherence to work together in interesting and enjoyable ways. Coheed and Cambria specializes in controlling a vast musical territory, connecting the genres we might identify as "progressive rock", "pop rock", "punk rock" under one grand design, and others and so blurring the lines between them, and The Afterman is their best example of this yet. Perhaps a bit less grandiose and more personal than Ascension, but in every way the conclusion it deserved. Both albums have my highest recommendation.