Helloween

The album title, Gambling With The Devil, is definitely programmatic. “At the end of the day, life is like a gamble with the devil,” vocalist Andi Deris reckons. The man knows what he’s talking about: Like few other metal acts, Helloween have survived the many crazes and trends the music business has produced, using each new experience to approach their next challenge with new strength. Backed by the impetus of their successful Keeper Of The Seven Keys – The Legacy world tour, which saw the band perform 93 shows in 34 countries all over the world (impressively documented on the double DVD, Live On 3 Continents), the five musicians, Andi Deris, Michael Weikath (guitars), Sascha Gerstner (guitars), Markus Großkopf (bass) and Dani Löble (drums), set about recording the twelfth Helloween studio album, Gambling With The Devil. The release of one of the most dynamic and mature offerings in the band’s history has been scheduled for October 26. “The fans’ positive reactions and the great responses to Keeper Of The Seven Keys – The Legacy really inspired us. We were rearing to go,” Andi Deris remembers. “It’s been years since I had so much fun composing.”

Gambling With The Devil is filled with haunting melodies, driving rhythms, virtuoso guitar solos and other typical Helloween trademarks, perfectly directed by producer Charlie Bauerfeind at the Mi Sueno studios in Tenerife. At the same time, the band has continued to develop, frequently surprising with progressive orchestrations and arrangements that have their finger unmistakably on the pulse of the times. “It’s all a question of self-confidence,” confesses Deris, whose contemporary and multi-faceted songwriting is a perfect match for the compositions of his colleagues, Weikath, Großkopf and Gerstner, without leaving the established framework of melodic metal.

16 new tracks were completed, 11 of which – plus the intro – have made it onto the regular version of Gambling With The Devil. Two more will be included in the album’s more lavish limited edition, among them the first single release, ‘As Long As I Fall’, a catchy tune par excellence. At the centre of the album is a trilogy, aptly referred to by Deris as the “trinity”, a critical appraisal of a lack of ideologies and proliferation of blind obedience, consisting of the progressive ‘The Bells Of The 7 Hells’, the slightly more sedate ‘Fallen To Pieces’ and the rhythmically demanding ‘I.M.E.’. Then there are typical Helloween numbers such as ‘Paint A New World’, ‘The Saints’ and ‘Can Do It’, which fascinate with their speed and catchiness. Another highlight is ‘Heaven Tells No Lies’, which has Helloween venture into Queen spheres. The album starts with the intro, ‘Crack The Riddle’, featuring Biff Byford (Saxon) as a guest speaker and a reference to the scratch card puzzle in the booklet. A concert ticket for the band’s impending tour of South America, including flight and accommodation, awaits the lucky winner.

Helloween’s Europan Hellish Rock tour, accompanied by Gamma Ray, is scheduled to start in mid-November 2007 and already has the experts click their tongues. Apart from a few festival appearances, this will be the first joint tour by Helloween and Gamma Ray. So here’s hoping that Gamma Ray mastermind Kai Hansen, a former Helloween member himself, will join his ex-colleagues in a jam session featuring Helloween classics. Together with the album release at the end of October, the final months of 2007 will be marked by non-stop highlights from the Helloween camp.




HISTORY:

Helloween came together in the early Eighties, formed by members of the two Hamburg bands, Iron Fist and Powerfool. The first line-up, already featuring Michael Weikath (guitar) and Markus Großkopf (bass), was marked from the start by a high level of independence and the unconditional determination to work on the group’s development. Only two years after the band’s foundation, the members signed a recording deal and brought out their first EP. Their debut album, Walls Of Jericho, and particularly the two subsequent offerings, Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part I and Part II, which sold over 250,000 copies in Germany alone each, catapulted them directly among the elite of hard rock acts. Helloween were a major success, not only in Germany, but also in Japan and the US, and their success story continued unabated despite a number of line-up changes. Their first live recording, Live In The U.K., conclusively proved the high musical standard that the band stood for in those days.

Following the release of their Pink Bubbles Go Ape (1991) and Chameleon (1993) albums and another personnel change (vocalist Andi Deris joined Helloween), the band went on to celebrate their triumphant return to the top of the scene with their seventh album, Master Of The Rings. Their subsequent release The Time Of The Oath, revived Helloween mania in Japan and South America even more, and the ensuing world tour and High Live, the second live release in the history of Helloween, crowned an era that had earned the musicians worldwide success all along the line.

In 1998, their eighth studio album, Better Than Raw, picked up seamlessly where the triumphal march of the previous years had left off, presenting at once the group’s stylistic development and the justified confidence of the band members who had tried out and courageously realised experimental song structures. Their 2000 album, Metal Jukebox, showed the five musicians from an unusual but by no means less fascinating side, featuring Helloween’s interpretations of memorable rock and pop songs from over thirty years of music history. The Dark Ride, a modern and impressive metal statement of an advanced international standard, came one year later. Rabbit Don´t Come Easy saw the band embark on a more melodic direction again, before going on to continue the tradition of their greatest classic on Keeper Of The Seven Keys III – The Legacy. Their live recordings, Live On 3 Continents (double DVD) and Live In Sao Paulo (double CD) were cut during the subsequent world tour, which resembled a triumphal march. The momentum of this world tour also prevails on the new Helloween recording, Gambling With The Devil!