Power and majesty have always been the cornerstone of any Helloween album (well, maybe not Pink Bubbles Go Ape,) but every album has this sense of awe surrounding it; that’s mainly due to the fact that despite line-up changes, they have been constantly releasing solid Metal albums.

Before you ask, I’m not going to get into the weeds of a history lesson, because at this point, if you’ve ever wanted to get into them, just go to Walls of Jericho and let the journey begin.

Now we’re in 2025 and the band is back with a brand spanking new slab of Teutonic extremity, hot on the heels of their incredibly fun Live At Budokhan (that was reviewed in these hallowed pages by yours truly).

Giants and Monsters is fucking killer. There, I said it; review over. No, not really… are you kidding? Jefe would string me from the side of the ship and keelhaul my stupid ass.

Beginning with the rising keyboards is “Giants on the Run” a shredding Thrash fest that changes tempo like a Formula 1 racing car, and it gets downright menacing near the end of the song. Even after all these years, Helloween still has the goods. “Savior of the World” goes full-throttle, pedal to the fucking Metal. Everything sounds phenomenal, like being there in the studio watching the album being recorded.

My first favorite track is “A Little is a Little too Much” it’s a bit of a mid-paced crusher with a catchy as fuck chorus and some killer soloing throughout.

Andi Deris and Kai Hansen are powerhouses on Giants and Monsters, their voices pairing off with each other, the fantastic production makes this an insanely fun album, and the bad as fuck artwork is like the wrapping paper on this gift of German steel.

“We Can be Gods” is a delicious thrasher, and it’s followed by a not-annoying ballad reminiscent of “A Tale That Wasn’t Right” from Keeper of the Seven Keys part 1. I generally hate ballads by other bands, Helloween being the exception to that statement. They’re just so good at it, I can’t help liking it.

“Into the Sun” gives way to the jumping up and down energy of “This is Tokyo” which is a better track than Alestorm’s “Mexico” even though they’re two different genres, and I just wanted to take a stab at Alestorm for no reason.

“Universe (Gravity for Hearts)” is one of those upbeat feel-good Helloween tracks. Power Metal has always had this optimistic impact on me; it boosts my confidence to the point where I feel like I can kill dragons and shit. The track has a badass break in the middle with some soaring vocals from Kai Hansen, and triumphant soloing for fist pumping, head-down raging.

Helloween can literally do no wrong. If they released an album of Lawrence Welk Polkas, it would still be fucking killer. “Hand of God” is not a Polka, it’s an intense mid-paced crusher with some snarling vocals from Hansen and Deris; such a magnificent song on an outstanding album from these stalwarts.

I didn’t know that their first Demo was called Death Metal Demo, and that’s from 1984! Interesting that the term was being used before Possessed used it on Seven Churches (give or take, around the same time).

Anyway, that’s a tidbit I wanted to share with you, constant reader. “Under the Moonlight” has a sort of “Living Ain’t no Crime” feeling to it that makes me giddy, and it’s followed by the immense, epic as hell, and suitably titled “Majestic”. It has a bit of an Iron Maiden vibe to the chorus and with it being the last song on Giants and Monsters it HAS to be a big, fat assed song, and it really is the perfect way to close out this 19th full-length (I need to reinforce the ‘full-length’ aspect of that statement because with singles and splits and compilation sets of various types, they have an incredibly huge body of work). So yeah, 19 full-length albums later and Helloween show no signs of slowing down or stopping their juggernaut mid-conquest.

Giants and Monsters is a great Helloween album. It manages to keep the ferocity and intensity of their 80s output while moving forward to show the world how it’s done. This is an album that throws the spiked gauntlet on the ground and says bring it the fuck on, Helloween are the kings of Power Metal; everyone else is pretenders to their throne. Get this beast now!

Holy shit, not only were these guys fast as a fucking shark; they were from Germany which was even cooler because back then the Cold War was still going on and Germany had this air of mystery and intrigue to it. I give all credit to Helloween because without them I never would have heard Kreator and Destruction, thus only feeding my growing hunger for Teutonic Thrash.

Now as far as live albums go, I covered Amorphis and their “live” Tales From The Thousand Lakes album recently and was less than thrilled with the “live” claim. Hearing the crowd and the band interaction is the heart of a great live album. Judas Priest did it with Priest…Live, King Diamond’s Abigail… Live 1987 is considered a classic for me, and I can’t leave out Iron Maiden and KISS.

Six live albums later Helloween have come back with a seventh and I’m here to tell you constant reader, it’s a beast. Four discs if you get the physical copy, there’s also a live video so that you can get the full experience of playing both at the same time for total aggressive immersion.

This is a career spanning experience kicking off with opening intro “Orbit” and once that’s out of the way it’s time for the 12:51 minute epic “Skyfall”. Maybe it’s about the James Bond movie, maybe it’s not; it doesn’t matter because it’s such a killer song. They smack right into a blistering rendition of “Eagle Fly Free” Michael Kiske sounds phenomenal as does Kai Hansen on “Kai’s Medley”, 16:07 minutes of a dive into the bands early albums so we get bites of “Savage” and “Ride the Sky” to name two.

I’m going to get it out of the way, just get it off my chest, this is an enjoyable in the moment live album. You’re literally there, listening (or watching) and cheering along with the Nippon Budokhan crowd. There’s a banter between Kiske, Andi Deris and Hansen that shows how current and former vocalists can share a stage and be friends with each other.

The production and mastering work is godly, each and every instrument stands out; especially the triple guitar attack from Michael Weikath, Kai Hansen, and Sascha Gerstner is just fucking massive. Slashing their way through “Mass Pollution” and “Future World” you can actually hear the crowd singing along; a sold-out crowd I might add.

There’s even a ballad thrown in with a funny introduction and “Forever and One (Neverland)” takes control. I would’ve liked to hear “A Tale that Wasn’t Right” from Keeper of the Seven Keys part 1; but whatever it’s the only slowdown that happens on an otherwise magnificent Power Metal album. Helloween are Power Metal, period.

After the ballad they blow through the rocking hard “Best Time”, “Dr. Stein” from Keeper of the Seven Keys part 2 and “How Many Tears” from Walls of Jericho. Having to pick songs out of such a fantastic back catalog must’ve been a great undertaking, but the show flows with hot blooded intensity; each song bringing more and more nostalgia for the glory days of German Power Metal.

“Keeper of the Seven Keys” gets a 20:46 minute rendition that’s captivating. “Perfect Gentleman”, and “I Want Out” round out the last of the album; “I Want Out” is by far one of my favorite Helloween songs; among others obviously but that riffing is absolutely hypnotic.

Alright, this album kicks ass; if that wasn’t apparent enough. If you love Power Metal, if you love Helloween (and the offshoot from them, the mighty Gamma Ray) then this is the album (and Blu-ray) for you! Hoch lebe Power Metal!

The new album is still heavy, but it’s also melodic and positive. The best of both worlds, perhaps?

For me, it’s just the way it turned out, you know? We had all the songs and if they sound like they sound, we won’t push them in another direction. They need to have their own life. When I do an album and listen to it later on…it’s still so close. It needs maybe a half of year. It needs different ears so it can start to sound normal. Just because I’m coming out of the process where I listened to the guitars and drums without the keyboards, without the vocals…I still hear it in little sections. We still need time to hear it as a big picture [laughs].

Lots of songs seem to be working well. “Far From the Sun” is one, “Church Breaks Down,” and “Fire Make Fly” is another. What songs are sticking with you?

“Nabetea” is a great theme; it’s a little classical piece Andi wrote about ancient history. I like it a lot because it has to do with freedom, which is something Helloween has always written about, like “Eagle Fly Free.” This “Nabeatea” thing is an amazing story about this nation years and years ago, and they were trying to do a democracy in the early days, which was interesting. It’s based on a real thing, actually. We’ll put it into the set to see how it works out, you know?

Andi sounds great on it, too.

Yeah, and if you listen to the ballad (“Hold Me In Your Arms”) you’ll notice he’s doing some different things, too. There is a lot of stuff on the album that is pretty different from song-to-song. I like that range of variety that we put on.

Plus you have “Asshole.”

Well, that one had to be said, you know? [laughs] They won’t play that one on American radio, won’t they?

I very much doubt it [laughs] Moving along, the recording sessions, what are they like these days? When I spoke to Weike about them, he said they were very much relaxed, that you guys were the model of efficiency. Do you see it that way too?

It’s pretty easy. When the songs are done, you know what you’re going to do most of the time. There are some parts in the studio that when you listen to the drums or guitars, I might change something here and there. The hardest is part is when you start and you expect to write some tunes, and you don’t have a single note yet [laughs]. You’re standing right on a big mountain, thinking you need a couple of tracks in a few weeks or months, then you start thinking it’s never going to work out. Then you finally start the very first song, and do some lyrics for it, then you write into it. Recording is like…I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s better than standing at the bottom of an epic mountain.

Once we hit 2014, you will be celebrating your 30^th anniversary. You have been there from the start, so, have you given this any thought?

Well, decay might start soon [laughs]. It’s being going on a long time, being in a band. It’s still not over…it keeps getting better.

Those early days when it was just the four of you: Ingo [Switchenburg], Kai, Weike, and you. What were they like?

I can remember the very first time we came over to the States. You couldn’t imagine it. That was the time I called the “big hairspray.” We were going to LA and going to the all the bars like the Rainbow. You’d be on the toilet, thinking you were in the ladies room [laughs]. That was just a point of time in the mid-80’s and late-80’s when heavy metal and hard rock was very big, like MTV, they came over for each fifth day and supported us big-time. It was great for us to go there. With everyone was happening, coming from Germany, we did a couple of tours in Germany, then Europe, then over to the States for a couple of months and doing all the American-styled things. It was a great experience. You can imagine coming there and doing all of those things at 22 years-old…it was crazy.

There’s a Youtube video shot in Minnesota on the first Keeper tour. Have you seen it?

Yeah, yeah. I like seeing the old stuff; it’s a great memory. Falling back into good memories…I like it. Kind of romantic.

You wouldn’t know it by your demeanor on stage, but that was around the time things went south with Noise Records and Kai started thinking about leaving.

It’s been some very, very good times, but we had some very rough and bad times, too. That’s what you have to go through to be in the end, how can you say…the guy you are. Everything that happened is a part of you, and it forms you. It’s not always funny when you’ve been doing it for as long as us, because we’ve had record company trouble, and members leaving. I remember the times when nobody wanted to hear us because they thought Helloween was finished, but then we came back with Master of the Rings.

The time from Keeper Part II to Pink Bubbles and the three-year layoff. With the legal troubles in mind, were you worried the band might never make another album?

That was never the point. It was just a matter of thinking of how to do things differently. When Kai was leaving, it was like “We have to find a new guitarist!” And we did that, but then we had all of this record company trouble, and we couldn’t record anything because we weren’t allowed to do anything under the name “Helloween” for one and-a-half years. But we always dealt with it well, and like, “Let’s carry on. What we started, we won’t give up.” We never thought about stopping it.

And you were always the middle man, too. On one side, it was Weike and Roland, then you had Ingo and Kiske on the other side. How hard was it to navigate those personalities?

Then you had the problem with Ingo, who was in very bad shape [Switchenburg committed suicide in 1995 – ed]. There were a lot of strong characters in the band, and we always had fights and things, but we always had good times, too. If somebody changes his mind and wants to do something different, he will do it without Helloween or do something else, or go with Helloween and do what is right. There were always decisions about those things and sometimes it wasn’t easy. You’re thinking, “My God, what’s going on this time?” Things got out of control sometimes.

And you were the mediator.

[laughs] Sometimes it was havoc, and sometimes it was like, nobody would really listen and everyone wanted to do things with their own heads. It’s been a very rough job sometimes [laughs]. Sometimes you had to make decisions, and they weren’t always fun. It’s like you go to work and you have this chief and when you’re told what to do, it’s easy. But this is a business and we have to decide for ourselves. The decisions you make are not always…you have to decide something that may hurt other people, but that’s the way it works.

It makes me wonder what the sessions for the Chameleon albums were like. I read stories that they were bad, and for a lack of a better term, “interesting.”

These recordings were very strange. It was a record where a couple of members wrote individual songs for themselves. It wasn’t such an album we did together. It was just like a bunch of solo album, album tracks from the members. They didn’t fit together. It’s an interesting album, but it wasn’t an album we worked together [on]. It sound great and good, but the songs are different, which isn’t a bad thing. At the end of the day, in a band like Helloween, none of those albums are sounding the same, it’s good to have an album like Chameleon in the back catalog. If you see it in the big picture, it’s still an interesting album.

Moving a bit forward, do you remember your first encounter with Andi?

Yes, of course. It was in Hamburg. With his former band, Pink Cream 69, they were doing recordings and we were living here, and I visited and gave them some pot and stuff [laughs]. We treated them like guests, then we were drinking beer and having fun. We learned each other and got to know each other, just staying in Hamburg with the boys.

Those first rehearsals with him, what were they like?

He came in very quick. The freshness of the Masters of the Rings album, which I very much like. He came in and we were already rehearsing for that album. He had some ideas for the album and some of our stuff was ready to go, and then we didn’t have much time. He came in and we were working on it already, and after a couple of weeks, we went into the studio. We had some great times working on those tracks very quick. It got something back from what we were missing from the two albums before, and that’s what I love album it.

He came in and at the time, Helloween were trying to find a way back to Helloween. He came in as an outsider, having a great overlook about what Helloween was supposed to be. He came in and reminded us of what we really are. It made a lot of things much clearer suddenly.

That was your career turning point. Have you ever thought from purely a hypothetical standpoint of what you would have done had Andi not come along?

I don’t know…I couldn’t see anyone else! We were friends already. He followed Helloween’s career and knew a lot about Helloween’s career and the last two albums we did. He said, “When I come in, Helloween has to be Helloween again!” I couldn’t see this with a stranger, you know? That was the right thing to do.

It’s interesting to think of how your career is divided into segments. You have the Kai era, then Kiske, and Andi, who has lasted nearly 20 years as your singer. Few bands have a history like that.

Everything we did…after Masters of the Rings, we had this feeling that if we can do this again, we can do anything. If we can get this machine re-started, there’s nothing to stop you.

Are you looking forward to hitting the road with Gamma Ray again?

Oh yeah, of course. We did the Part I of the tour a few years ago and now doing it again. We have a little jam with Kai somewhere in the set. It’s very good for the people; Kai plays like, more than an hour and we play an hour and-a-half or more. I think it’s a good thing for the people.

It’s always cool to see the two bands onstage together at the same time.

It is! People have always wanted to start this “Gamma Ray Camp” versus “Helloween Camp” and those two sides…but we thought it was cool to put this together to make those people shut up. It’s fun and something different. People seem to like it. It’s very inspiring, actually.

www.helloween.org

As with most intros, you can skip “Crack the Riddle,” but you can’t ignore “Kill It,” a snarling beast of a song that’s possibly one of the meanest and heaviest tunes Helloween has ever recorded. It hooks you with the soaring power metal bridge, then pummels you with the pounding chorus. Andi Deris’ vocals are probably at their best on this tune, and on the record as a whole. He moves through sounds that range from classic power metal to 1970s progressive to the aggressive “Kill it, kill it, kill it” screams on the chorus, to an almost black metal rasp coming out of the interlude.

Unfortunately, no other song on the record quite lives up to “Kill It,” and for the next few songs, you’ll miss that aggression. “The Saints” starts out well, but somewhere along the way morphs into that same power metal tune you’ve heard four billion times before. “As Long as I Fall” just reeks a little too much of 1980s power pop.

But hang in there, because there’s some good stuff coming a little later, mainly in the form of a three-song cycle mid-record that serves as a mini-concept album. It opens with the prog-power assault of “The Bells of the 7 Hells” which has the most irressistible hook to be found on the record. It’s a match for any soaring power metal tune in the band’s history. The second song, “Fallen to Pieces,” is softer with a slightly more mainstream bent, but it’s still a strong piece. With its electronic undertones, it really sounds like what they were going for and didn’t quite get on “As Long as I Fall.” The trilogy closes with one of the best guitar riffs on the record from Michael Weikath and Sascha Gerstner in the sliding main riff of “I.M.E.”

The final three songs on the record are hit and miss. “Can Do It” offers a really strange mix of showtune and 1980s power pop that just doesn’t quite work. “Dreambound” delivers a solid power/traditional metal number that while, not as engaging as “Kill It” or “The Bells of the 7 Hells,” is still entertaining, and “Heaven Tells No Lies” offers up an enjoyable shot at an epic, storytelling tune.

In the end, Gambling With the Devil doesn’t quite live up to the promise that “Kill It” makes, and on some of the tracks, I’m left wishing for that more aggressive sound. But it’s still a solid effort and the best record that Helloween has done in a long time. If you’ve liked Helloween in the past, but not lately, definitely give this one a shot.