I can still remember the first time I heard of  Helloween, and the particularly German brand of power metal. It was somewhere in 1996 and the band had just released The Time of the Oath, the second album with vocalist Andi Deris after the departure of frontman Michael Kiske. A metal and rock programme on Dutch music channel TMF was showing the video for first single outing Power and I was absolutely taken by the catchy chorus, the speedy metal and the twin guitar solos. I had started getting into old school heavy metal a few years before, and this was right up my alley. However, I do remember thinking, ‘this will never last. I’ll love this now, but I know I will have grown tired by it by the next studio album.’ Because that’s almost always the way things go with things which catch on immediately, isn’t it? Continue reading →