Helloween – Giants & Monsters | soundsfromthedarkside

Helloween are back with their second album since the reunion. Will this be another delicious treat, or will we be tricked this time around? Let’s find out.

When German power metal flagship Helloween welcomed back Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske back into the fold back in 2016, everyone thought it would only be for a reunion tour and that would be the end of that. Imagine the surprise then, when the band headed into the studio and released their self-titled reunion album in 2021. Again, a lot of people, myself included, thought it would be a one-off when it clearly wasn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be reviewing Giants & Monsters below.

Back in 2021, I had high hopes that bringing back Kai Hansen would result in a sort of Helloween/Gamma Ray hybrid when it came to songwriting. Hansen always had a flair for throwing Queen-esque bombast into his already catchy power metal songs, and it’s part of what made Gamma Ray albums like Land of the Free and Somewhere Out in Space so endlessly enjoyable. Helloween instead featured only one Hansen track (Skyfall). Whilst the album was good, it felt very fragmented in both the songwriting and vocal department, as if the band wasn’t really sure how they were going to bring all these elements together cohesively. Luckily, Giants & Monsters fares much better in that respect.

Starting out strong with Giants on the Run, the band hits the ground running. Written by Hansen and Deris, it marries later-era Helloween with that typical Hansen-approach, with a bombastic, operatic middle part where Hansen takes over vocal duties for a bit. You could hardly wish for a more riveting opening track. After that it’s time to hit the gas pedal with Saviour of the World and give Kiske his first chance to shine. He sounds great here, and the song is blessed with the catchiest of choruses and some very solid guitar soloing. A Little is a Little Too Much is, just like the album’s first single This is Tokyo, a typical Andi Deris track. It sounds a little more lighthearted than the latter and brings Deris and Kiske together on vocal duties.

The fun part of Giants & Monsters is that if you know the band and their members well enough, you can clearly hear who wrote each song. We Can Be Gods, for example, sounds like it could have been on any of the later Gamma Ray tracks. So, lo and behold, of course Hansen wrote it. Into the Sun is your typical, rather uneventful Deris ballad. The long Universe (Gravity for Hearts) reeks of Gerstner’s hand, whilst Under the Moonlight, written by Weikath, feels like it could have been a long lost song from the Keeper of the Seven Keys sessions. It has that bubbly, joyous vibe that a lot of the songs from that era had. The closing epic Majestic is, again, typical Hansen, stylistically hovering somewhere between Helloween and Gamma Ray. Not everyone will care, of course, but I had a great time trying to figure out who wrote what the first time and being right nine out of ten times.

Giants & Monsters is a triumph, and a step forward from the last album. The formula remains the same of course, but the band has further perfected it, with the different writing styles and sounds gelling better than they did before. Where Helloween sometimes felt like a bunch of individual ideas thrown together in a random order, Giants & Monsters feels more like a cohesive band effort, and it makes for a better album. The material is really strong all over the board, with only Hand of God not really doing anything for me. Into the Sun is a fine but unremarkable ballad but works well in the grand scheme of things, and with a running time of just over fifty minutes, Giants & Monsters just breezes by, leaving you reaching for the repeat button. For such a late career record (their nineteenth in forty years) it’s both remarkable and impressive what these guys have managed to churn out here and there won’t be a Pumpkins fan out there who will come away truly disappointed from this one.

Label: Reigning Phoenix Music

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