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Helloween’s maverick decision in 2016 to merge their current and classic line-ups turned out to be a masterstroke. What could have been an ungainly, Frankenstein’s Monster-style assemblage of musical body parts instead resulted in a kind of German metal Avengers, an unlikely supergroup where all the members happened to have been in the same band at different times.
The first album this new iteration released, 2021’s Helloween, was good, but an obvious desire to not reignite past acrimonies lent it an air of cautiousness – the musical equivalent of an ex-wife tiptoeing around the party so as not to upset the current partner. There’s no such issues with this follow-up. Giants & Monsters is a top-tier Helloween album, one that can sit alongside their twin high points Keeper Of The Seven Keys Pt 1 and Pt 2 without disgracing itself.
Admirably for a band who can legitimately lay claim to being the fathers of power metal, it’s not a power metal album. There are no sprawling fantastical epics here, no dragons or orcs or magical pumpkins. The bombast levels barely even touch ‘moderate’, and there’s not a wailing singer in a leather singlet within miles. Instead, it’s a thoroughly modern melodic metal album, embodied by soaring opener Giants On The Run and blockbusting pop-metal anthems This Is Tokyo and A Little Is A Little Too Much.
That’s not to say they’ve dispensed with grandeur; Into The Sun is a big duet between returned Keeper-era singer Michael Kiske and his replacement-turned-bandmate Andi Deris that manages to be grandstanding without sinking into a pit of cheese. The pair’s interlocking performances on that song illustrate just how well this unlikely, seven-headed hydra works: Kiske brings the power, Deris the punch and, adding to the fun, guitarist and third vocalist Kai Hansen adds a little old-school rawness here and there, not to mention some Queen-inspired three-way vocal harmonies.
Musically, the triple-guitar line-up – Hansen, Michael Weikath and Sascha Gerstner – are equally simpatico, flitting between the old-school gallop of Universe (Gravity For Hearts) and the more measured riffing of Hand Of God. The duelling guitars and sing-song chorus of Under The Moonlight even call back to their late-80s glory days.
This bulked-out line-up could easily have tripped over their own feet, but they’ve avoided it. ‘The masters we are!’ Kiske sings on closing mini-epic Majestic. He’s not singing about Helloween, but he might as well be.