Helloween: Out For The Glory, In For The Long Run
With a band name like HELLOWEEN, images of melting pumpkins with frozen fearful expressions flicker across the mind; morphing shadows bounce from one wall to another yet always remain in your periphery vision no matter how hard you try to maintain a steady glance; and ear-splitting howls echo deep into the lightning struck night sky beneath a threatening blood moon. It’ll come as an anticlimactic surprise to learn then, that one half of the founding members of the majorly influential German 80s power metal band enjoys nothing more than to sit back, open a carton of cigarettes, and enjoy his calzone pizzas in peace underneath the cheerful Spanish sun.
Guitarist Michael Weikath contemplates the possibilities of Monday night’s dinner, coming up disappointed once he realises his first choice is no longer an option. “I wanted to get pizza tonight but the pizza place is closed,” and instead fantasises over what could have been. “I do like my calzones, with ham, cheese, mushrooms, and lots of chillies inside with tomato sauce on top. The place I used to go to was amazing, but then it got worse and worse and then went out of business, so there was no more calzone for me for a few months and I had to travel far if I wanted one.”
The abundance of vitamin D that blesses the Canary Islands has also done wonders for Michael’s creativity and after 35 years of heavy metal influence, HELLOWEEN are still sweeping up milestones on the bumpy road of their career. In late 2016, the band announced that past members Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske would be rejoining the outfit for the Pumpkins United World Tour, inflating the group’s number to a mighty seven and expanding the vocal battalion to an unstoppable three. The tour was a worldly success and past transgressions were forgotten and forgiven, with all involved sharing the fruits of their labour. It was a no-brainer then that the next obvious step was to record a full-length album in celebration of the camaraderie and brotherhood of HELLOWEEN; the highly anticipated self-titled record.
“There wasn’t a big change because everyone involved has known a lot about this band over the years. Everybody was feeling the encouragement and incentive to do it as good as possible because you knew the fans were expecting so much.” It’s all water under the bridge they say, and in the case of HELLOWEEN, letting a stream of running water impact something so valuable and special would’ve raised eyebrows and devastated the widespread fanbase. The members themselves saw this opportunity for what it was too.
“It was related to something Kai had said a while ago; if we don’t get together again in some shape or form and do the Helloween thing, then we must be freakin’ stupid. He [Kai] said having Michael there would be brilliant as it would mean he wouldn’t have to sing some parts but could sing the others. We could also have a great time and lots of success as well, and the fans would be pleased. We’d had a chat about things that were, things that weren’t, and what to forgive, and to be friends again. We used to be best friends before we went into some kind of vicious cycle, and we can’t explain how that happened. We had the idea to do a tour and see what happens, and it went extremely well and was enjoyable. People said ‘okay, because you’re so good now, you should do a new track.’ The tour itself [United Alive] took on biblical proportions; we played Wacken as the headliner in front of hundreds of thousands of people, and then went to Rock In Rio which is the pinnacle of festivals, and that was even bigger, greater, and huger than ever. People said, ‘because you’re such a great band together and we love it and enjoy it so much, you’ve got to do an album.’”
The record itself incorporates an array of elements taken from the entirety of HELLOWEEN’s past discography, threading the many strings of narratives the band’s history has taken on into one mighty LP. To round off the record and what truly brings its contents full circle, is the utilisation of analog recording on the drums and the same kit that was used by the late band’s percussionist Ingo Schwichtenberg. Considering the possibilities the new age of digital recording has to offer and the ever progressing, always expanding software packages and updates at our disposal, to some it may seem unwise to revert back to the days of 24-track tape.
“You only get that punch with real tape-recording. You can use all these electronic filters to get as close as possible but it will never be that original effect, you just can’t bring it across and create it in a digital way. There are other things at work on a tape. The rest was done the regular digital way, but in the end all the data was sent to New York to the Valhalla Studios with Ronald Prent, who reworked it all into analog because that studio in particular is 100% analog. There’s a lot you can do with the sound, the impact, and saturation, if you have the knowledge and experience which thankfully the guys involved truly had.”
There can be any number of factors that can turn an ordinary record into one that’ll pop out from the crowd and stand the test of time. One of them would certainly be the utilisation of the late drummer’s drum kit being played by Daniel Löble in the same spot Ingo once played it during the recording of the Chameleon record, which Michael recalls being somewhat of a calling from fate.
“It had to be cleaned and oiled and put into a playable state, the one that he had used during the Keeper Tour. It was placed into the very same studio we did the recordings for Chameleon in and the same spot where he had his white drum kit. There’s something about it and of course it depends on what skins you use, how you treat the kit, how you tune it, all of which was maintained because Danny has studied the works of Ingo from early on, way before any of us could’ve realised he would end up becoming an actual member of HELLOWEEN. He was studying it because he was just interested, and Ingo was an idol to him as well. All of these things came together.”
It’s needless to say that this self-titled album sits high upon a pedestal for all involved, and those not. The tracks themselves stretch their potential to the limits, with high energy, pop-melodied anthems and ferociously deadly octane tracks, it’d be hard to pin down the one that outshines the rest.
“I took a lot of delectation on Out For The Glory when it was building up shape and coming into form. I had a very old version of it during Seven Sinners, and it by far wasn’t as rich or good as this version, so Out For The Glory has been around for 15 years with the melody itself, of which I came up with after watching An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, which is another misleading piece in history, but nevertheless I got the main melody from the title. I didn’t like the words though so I had to come up with the right ones, and then I didn’t like the chords so I had to change those, so it took that time. Now it’s perfect, and something to be very proud of. We had that preproduction period in Hamburg throughout November and December 2019 where we picked at every detail of each track and rearranged, retuned, changed the grooves and tempos, deleting things, adding things, until we were all satisfied.”
After 35 years of creating, recording, marketing, and playing music, you learn to lean on those around you who may have a keener eye for details but are just far enough away from the action to have an unbiased viewpoint. The same can be said for HELLOWEEN’s approach to deciding the track listings. “There’s always several possible running orders, but this time around the boss at our record company actually took it upon himself and said, ‘I’d like to do the track list for the album if I may?’ There was a minimum amount of discussion involved as there was two or three versions he’d come up with and had a preferred one that he thought was cool, and you can easily go ‘yeah, that’s a good running order.’”
With the epic proportions and journeys HELLOWEEN’s music takes on, it’s easy to imagine the tunes being incorporated into some kind of musical theatre piece, much like MEATLOAF’s Bat Out Of Hell or GREEN DAY’s American Idiot musicals. A narrative similar to that of Phantom Of The Opera, an almost nightmarish storyline with spine-tingling plot twists and chilling scenes, would certainly welcome HELLOWEEN songs as the soundtrack.
“You could eventually try something of that sort in Las Vegas. I’ve seen that some bands, like CHEAP TRICK, have had a few appearances in Las Vegas with a stage show and theatrics, which has been great to bide their time against those who may be thinking ‘whatever happened to CHEAP TRICK?’ They’re a major band for me and I like what they do, and it’s been interesting to see them as a Vegas band and it has you wondering how that may have come about. If you’re going down the route of FRANK SINATRA or ELVIS, where they’d have a show each and every day and only get a few free days off, it’s definitely something I could imagine us doing if we’re getting too old, just doing something repetitive. Once I had the idea of doing a stationary show where the fans would come so we don’t have to travel.”
The future of metal is an unmovable beast, with many trying and failing to deconstruct it’s longstanding legacy over the years, the genre proves itself and all of its sub-genres as a force to quite literally be reckoned with. It’s not easy though, with many bands falling apart just as they reach the outer rings of Saturn and their wings singe in the scolding heat of the sun, but Michael knows a thing or two about how to ensure that never happens. “Everyone needs to pull at one string. It may be interesting if it’s part of the same concept, but if it contradicts what you’d been creating beforehand and the particular direction you want to go, then you may get lost on the way, especially if it ends in having to fire someone and part ways.”
The self-titled record from HELLOWEEN is a testament to Michael’s statement, having travelled that road for three and a half decades and picked up a number of life lessons along the way that convey him as a wiser man than most. Only a fool would choose to not heed the anecdotes and fables that surround HELLOWEEN’s legacy, one of which continues to create and repeat its own history.
Helloween is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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