Helloween

Before power metal acquired dragons, luminous choruses and vocalists testing the structural limits of stained glass, Helloween had already laid its foundation. Formed in Hamburg in 1984, the band began with Kai Hansen handling both guitar and vocals, Michael Weikath on second guitar, Markus Grosskopf on bass and Ingo Schwichtenberg on drums. The EP *Helloween* and the album *Walls of Jericho*, both released in 1985, presented an incendiary mix of traditional heavy metal and near-thrash speed. It was rough, accelerated and still far from the exuberance that would come later, but the project was already clear: play faster without sacrificing melody. Michael Kiske's arrival changed the band's scale. Only 18 years old, the singer brought range, clarity and a power that let Helloween shed part of the rudimentary aggression of the early work and reach for grander compositions. *Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part I*, from 1987, and *Part II*, from 1988, combined speed metal energy with harmonised guitars, monumental choruses and long epic structures. "Future World", "Halloween", "Eagle Fly Free", "Dr. Stein", "I Want Out" and the track "Keeper of the Seven Keys" did not merely form a classic repertoire. They established much of the vocabulary European power metal would use for decades afterwards. Helloween understood something many imitators would forget: speed is not enough. Their songs had lightness, humour and an almost irreverent personality, symbolised by the pumpkin that became inseparable from their identity. While other bands treated metal as a permanently solemn ceremony, the German group managed to sound epic without losing the ability to laugh at itself. There was virtuosity, but also direct choruses. There was fantasy, but without the gravity of someone who believes they are drafting a new chapter of Norse mythology after three beers. The success of the *Keepers* brought international recognition, but also attrition. Kai Hansen left the band in 1989 and founded Gamma Ray, replaced by Roland Grapow. The albums *Pink Bubbles Go Ape* and *Chameleon* showed a group lost between commercial expectations, internal conflicts and experiments that drifted away from its original strength. In 1993, Michael Kiske and Ingo Schwichtenberg also departed. The lineup responsible for the meteoric rise was undone, and Helloween seemed destined to survive only as a historical reference. The arrival of Andi Deris on vocals, however, began one of European metal's most important reconstructions. *Master of the Rings*, released in 1994, restored the band's energy and direction. *The Time of the Oath*, from 1996, consolidated the recovery, while *Better Than Raw* and *The Dark Ride* showed the group could preserve its characteristic melodies while exploring heavier and darker approaches. Deris did not try to imitate Kiske. His rougher, more theatrical voice created another identity, allowing Helloween to cross the 1990s and 2000s without becoming a caricature of its classic phase. The following decades brought new lineups, changes of guitarists and drummers and an uneven discography, but rarely an irrelevant one. Michael Weikath and Markus Grosskopf remained the pillars, joined by Deris, Sascha Gerstner and Dani Löble. Works such as *The Dark Ride*, *Gambling with the Devil*, *7 Sinners* and *My God-Given Right* alternated weight, traditional melodies and attempts at updating. Not everything reached the grandeur of the 1980s, obviously. Demanding that of every album would be like insisting lightning strike the same studio twice. The most improbable chapter began in 2016, when Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske returned for the expanded lineup known as Pumpkins United. Rather than replacing Deris or removing the members of the modern phase, Helloween gathered its different eras into a seven-musician formation. The self-titled album of 2021 showed the reunion was not merely an exercise in nostalgia but a creatively functional structure, with three vocalists and three guitarists coexisting within the same identity. In 2025, *Giants & Monsters* became the second record by that reunified lineup. Produced by Charlie Bauerfeind and Dennis Ward, the album carried the group into its fifth decade of activity without dismantling the architecture that made its sound recognisable. In 2026 the band continued its 40th-anniversary tour through North America, Japan, Europe and Latin America, showing the reunion had stopped being a temporary event and become a legitimate new phase. Helloween's importance does not come down to having influenced Stratovarius, Angra, Rhapsody, Edguy and countless descendants. Their real achievement was proving that metal could be fast without being brutal, virtuosic without being impenetrable, and optimistic without losing force. Many bands played faster, sang higher and created more complex universes. Very few wrote an entire grammar. Helloween is not merely one of the founders of modern power metal. It is the pumpkin planted at the centre of a genealogical forest that keeps growing. And four decades later, there are still very few people capable of pulling it out of the ground.