Michael Weikath

Michael Weikath is Helloween's founding guitarist and the man most responsible for the turn that transformed the band from a fast group out of Hamburg into the founding landmark of European power metal. Born in 1962, he assembled the group in 1984 alongside Kai Hansen, Markus Grosskopf and Ingo Schwichtenberg, and is, with Grosskopf, one of the two members present throughout the band's history. His contribution is one of writing, not speed. While Walls of Jericho (1985) still sounded like raw speed metal, it was Weikath who insisted on melody, on the singable chorus and on the long, narrative structure — the result being the two epic title tracks of Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part 1 (1987) and Part 2 (1988), both written by him, along with "Dr. Stein" and "A Tale That Wasn't Right". Those two albums created the template that virtually every German and Scandinavian band in the genre would follow afterwards. He crossed every phase that came next: Kai Hansen's departure, Michael Kiske's, the Andi Deris era, the dismissal of Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch in 2001, and the 2016 reunion that brought Hansen and Kiske back to the same stage. He is known for firm opinions and a temperament that produced internal friction across four decades, but his permanence is the axis around which the band reorganised itself so many times. He remains in the group on Helloween (2021) and Giants & Monsters (2025).