Markus Grosskopf

Markus Grosskopf is Helloween's founding bassist and, alongside Michael Weikath, one of only two musicians present throughout the band's history, from 1984 to the present. Born in 1965, he has crossed four decades, five singers, six guitarists and three drummers without ever leaving. His bass playing is fast and active in a way later power metal largely abandoned. Grosskopf plays with his fingers at tempos that would practically demand a pick, and writes lines that move against the guitar rather than doubling it — a device audible as early as Walls of Jericho (1985), and one that gives the Keeper albums a density their imitations rarely reached. In a genre where the bass tends to vanish beneath layers of harmonised guitar, his remains perceptible. That continuity has a practical consequence: when Helloween split into opposing camps — over Kai Hansen's and Michael Kiske's departures, over the dismissal of Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch in 2001 — Grosskopf was one of the elements that let the band go on existing as the same thing. He is there in the 2016 reunion, which brought all three of the group's singers onto one stage, and on the albums Helloween (2021) and Giants & Monsters (2025). Outside the band he created Bassinvaders, a project performed entirely by bassists, with dozens of guests from the genre.