Helloween Biography
Alongside Switzerland's Celtic
Frost and Sweden's Bathory,
Germany's Helloween were possibly the most influential heavy
metal band to come out of Europe during the 1980s. By taking the hard
riffing and minor key melodies handed down from metal masters like Judas
Priest and Iron
Maiden, then infusing them with the speed and energy introduced by the
burgeoning thrash metal movement, Helloween crystallized the sonic ingredients
of what is now known as power metal. Sadly, just as they were on the verge of
breaking to a wider audience -- even flirting with American success -- the
band's meteoric rise was rudely interrupted by internal strife and a string of
bad business decisions. These blunders kept them from ever regaining their
original momentum, but Helloween took their hard-knock lessons in stride and
continued to prosper in the international metal arena on their own terms. More
importantly, they remained the benchmark by which most every power metal band is
still measured.
Helloween were formed in Hamburg, Germany, by guitarists
Kai Hansen
and Michael
Weikath, bassist Markus
Grosskopf, and drummer Ingo
Schwichtenberg. Originally named Second Hell then Iron Fist before morphing
into Helloween in 1982, they signed with Germany's own fledgling Noise
International two years later. With Hansen
also handling vocals and the bulk of songwriting duties, the quartet recorded
its self-titled debut mini-album in early 1985. The full-length Walls of Jericho
and the Judas
maxi-single followed the year after, and the media was soon buzzing over the
band's thrash-fueled interpretation of classic heavy metal. Countless fans
across continental Europe were also fast converting to the band's cause, but Hansen
remained dissatisfied with his singing ability, and felt Helloween needed a
proper frontman in order to achieve their full potential. Enter teenage vocalist
Michael
Kiske, whose high-pitched delivery followed in the footsteps of previous
heavy metal banshees like Rob
Halford and Bruce
Dickinson.
The new chemistry proved as explosive on-stage as it did
in the studio, and with their classic lineup now intact, Helloween were ready
for the big time. Returning to the studio in early 1987, the band emerged in May
with Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. 1, a landmark recording that remains arguably
the single most influential power metal album to date. Its volatile combination
of power and melody would inspire an entire generation of metal bands, and
transformed Helloween into bona fide superstars all over Europe and the U.K.,
even making tentative inroads into America at the time. The band toured
relentlessly for the rest of the year and into 1988 (including a lengthy opening
stint with Iron
Maiden), but despite this manic work schedule, they still found time to
record the aptly titled Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. 2. Released in September
1988, the record was another blockbuster
that crashed the U.K. Top 30, but its uneven songwriting (especially from
longtime leader Kai
Hansen) revealed the beginnings of a major band crisis.
Helloween's watershed performance at that year's Donington
Monsters of Rock Festival proved to be their crowning glory, but for Hansen,
his dream come true also represented the culmination of his ambitions for the
group. Shockingly, the guitarist soon announced his departure from the band he
had helmed to the top, claiming that Helloween were now too big a beast for him
to control. (He would soon make a fresh start with a new outfit called Gamma
Ray, which, to no one's surprise, sounded remarkably like Helloween.) But
the remaining members of Helloween weren't about to let their shot at stardom
slip away, and after drafting former Rampage
guitarist Roland
Grapow, they got right back to work with a sold-out tour of the U.K.
Impressed by the band's momentum, giant EMI stepped in and offered to sign them
away from the ever troubled Noise Records, but in doing so, wound up igniting a
legal dispute that would sideline Helloween for nearly two years. Several live
albums (Live in the U.K. for Europe, Keepers
Live for Japan, and I
Want Out: Live for the U.S.) were released to distract the fans during this
hiatus, and the band obtained added support from the mighty Sanctuary management
team (Iron
Maiden, W.A.S.P., etc.) to boot.
Confident that they'd accumulated little, if any rust from
their extended layoff, Helloween finally returned to action with the oddly
titled Pink
Bubbles Go Ape in 1991. But no amount of EMI or Sanctuary muscle could
compensate for the scattered, unfocused songwriting that dominated the album.
Furthermore, the band's quirky attempts at humor had grown so forced that fans
weren't sure what to make of furious metal anthems with names like the title
track and "Heavy Metal Hamsters." The record bombed in no uncertain
terms, as did its even more schizophrenic follow-up, Chameleon.
Recorded in 1993 by an obviously shell-shocked band, its poor showing only
exacerbated growing internal dissension, which culminated with the ousting of
both Kiske
(off to launch a solo career) and Schwichtenberg
due to drug-related physical and mental health issues. Fair-weather friends EMI
and Sanctuary also decided to cut their losses at this time, leaving the
shattered remnants of Helloween to fend for themselves. Attempting to regroup as
fast as possible, Helloween brought in new singer Andi
Deris and drummer Uli
Kusch to record 1994's Master of the Rings, a small but determined step in
the right direction. Then tragedy struck, when former drummer Ingo
Schwichtenberg -- a diagnosed manic depressive whose worsening condition had
been partly to blame for his dismissal -- took his own life, throwing himself in
front of a train near his native Hamburg.
Shaken to the core, but as driven as ever, Helloween
dedicated 1996's The Time of the Oath to their fallen friend, and,
coincidentally, the album turned out to be the strongest since their glory
years, doing much to resurrect their career. The ensuing tour spawned the
double-disc set High
Live and confirmed the band's return to form as major players in the
international metal arena (in Europe and Japan, they were arguably bigger than
ever). Helloween continued to prosper with 1998's Better
Than Raw, 1999's celebratory Metal
Jukebox covers album, and 2000's The
Dark Ride, and not even the departure of longtime members Grapow
and Kusch
could slow them for long. Now regarded as elder statesmen of Euro-metal,
Helloween celebrated their achievements with 2002's Treasure
Chest greatest-hits set. This was followed by 2003's Rabbit
Don't Come Easy, which introduced new guitarist Sascha
Gerstner and featured Motörhead's
Mikkey Dee
guesting on drums until a permanent replacement could be found in Stefan
Schwarzmann (ex-U.D.O., Running
Wild and many more). Ed Rivadavia, All Music
Guide