It’s Helloween’s fifteenth album – and this band have been around so long that surely they are just churning out generic power metal albums right? Wrong…
[tracklist]
01. Heroes
02. Battle’s Won
03. My God-Given Right
04. Stay Crazy
05. Lost In America
06. Russian Roulé
07. The Swing Of A Fallen World
08. Like Everybody Else
09. Creatures In Heaven
10. If God Loves Rock ‘N’ Roll
11. Living On The Edge
12. Claws
13. You, Still Of War
[/tracklist]
[details]
[length]61:11[/length]
[record_label]Nuclear Blast[/record_label]
[release_date]May 29th, 2015[/release_date]
[/details]
I am just going to come out and say it right away. ‘My God-Given Right‘ was a huge surprise. I keep thinking that Helloween are going to start doing what most bands with their career span do and just churn out some average heavy metal album every two years with one acceptable hit song. Also the fact that the band spent a decade trying to recover from the disasters that were ‘Pink Bubbles Go Ape‘ and ‘Chameleon‘ doesn’t help that pattern of thought. But then again the band has put together some very good records over the last 10 years, so why was this the biggest surprise of them all?
Well to put it simply, ‘My God-Given Right‘ as an album you can pit against the very best of European power metal in the last decade, and like a fine whiskey, age has only improved Helloween.
The band seem to be going on the opposite career trajectory of those that have been around 30 years or more – the album fires off with ‘Heroes‘, a thunderous track that makes a triumphant statement – the heavy metal balls are back out. The first few tracks burn on like a firestorm, with ‘Battle’s Won‘ bringing the speed, and ‘My God-Given Right’ laying down the prolific anthem style that we know will engulf stages at a live show.
What was so unanticipated about this album is a cannot seem to find anything wrong with it. I was expecting a flurry of overclocked mid-tempo power metal songs with enough cheese to put Provence out of business, but what I found was a perfectly mixed sound, soaring musicianship, a little bit of ‘new’ and some of the best classic heavy metal songs I have heard in a long time.
The track ‘Lost in America‘ is an absolute gem. A gargantuan chorus with thick guitar chugging and sharp leads throughout. Every song on the album has some merit to it, and again it is simply unbelievable that this band has not run out of ideas, bar the lyrics where it seems the aforementioned track was written about a flight delay and a little bit of cringing themes here and there.
Even the apocalyptic epics of ‘The Swing of a Fallen World‘ and ‘You, Still At War‘ have massive prowess, demonstrating that the use of guitar effects, synths and orchestra still can co-exist with the raw Helloween style that hasn’t really changed a whole lot since 1994 and the introduction of Andi Deris.
The band has now had a consistent line-up for 10 years, and this makes the fifth album in a row they have had with the same line up. Perhaps that is a contributing factor to the amazing outcome of this album, especially since they have always had that comparison of ‘Keeper of the Seven Keys‘ follow them throughout their entire career.
Many metal fans have evolved since Helloween’s inception to take solace in other subgenre’s, but often we forget where a lot of European metal bands found inspiration, in classic heavy metal like this. The album represents Helloween as true bannermen of European metal, and ‘My God-Given Right‘ should be on that banner’s sigil.
[verdict]Yes[/verdict]
[why]Catchy choruses, chunky riffs, soaring vocals and speed throughout! The bands fifteenth album shows why they are domineers in the European heavy metal scene.[/why]
