839. Helloween / Metal Jukebox. 1999. 4/5

At what point of your career do you think you would have to get to before you decided that recording and releasing an album fully devoted to cover songs is the right thing to do? Although this is basically a rhetorical question, it is perhaps one worth considering. Is it a point where you are so comfortable in your band’s success that you are sure that this decision could either be an excellent upselling move to create further record sales, such as the way Metallica’s “Garage Days Re-revisited" EP had done in 1987, and then “Garage Inc” had been the year prior to this album’s release. Or is it a point that it was the perfect time to rekindle a dwindling interest in the band as a whole, to draw back fans lost due to underperforming albums in recent times, such as perhaps Queensryche’s “Take Cover” compilation in 2007. Or is it a point where you’ve got nothing better to do and you just feel like doing some songs, more or less like Ozzy Osbourne’s “Under Cover” album in 2005. And there are many other examples, for which the reasons why they were done can only be asked of the artists themselves.
In the case of Helloween, their trajectory had been on a steady rise once again having bottomed out in the early 1990’s. On the back of some changes in the band and on two excellent albums in “Master of the Rings” and “The Time of the Oath”, Helloween had gotten back on their feet and were making headway again in the difficult musical times they found themselves in.
One of the interesting things about the recording of the album is that all of the music was recorded by each member separate from the others, in different studios around the world. I would think that was interesting because if it is a covers album, it must have been very difficult to organise how the band wanted each cover version to sound. I mean, you couldn’t just ask each member to go in and decide how they wanted to play each song, and then try and piece it all together! That would have been an impossible task. So there had to have been some conversation on the songs and the way they were going to do their ‘Helloween’ versions, in order to make it sound like they weren’t just playing a note for note version of each of the tracks, before they all went to their different locations and physically recorded each bit by themselves. I’d have thought that recording a covers album would have been a fun thing to do AS A BAND rather than singularly and apart.

The song selection by the band for this album covers the gamut of great hard rock and pop bands of the 1970’s, along with a couple of surprises along the way. And the great part about these versions of these songs is that they are faithful to the originals, in the way that if you know the song it is instantly recognisable, but they have also put a bit of Helloween into them to create a bigger adaption, either through instrumentation or tempo or vocal.
Covering a Beatles song is always fraught with danger, so I’m always of the belief that you should accept them with a grain of salt. And their version here of “All My Loving” with double kick and a faster speed does credit to bringing a different light to the song. On the other hand, the cover of Cream’s “White Room” draws out the heavier tones of the track while retaining the original beautiful groove and feeling of the song. Andi sings this particularly well and the band play it superbly. Another song they do excellently is “Hocus Pocus”, the Focus song that many people would know when they heard even if they didn’t know the title or the original band that played it. The original has been used in commercials and films for decades, and this version more than does it justice.
There were several songs here that I was unfamiliar with when I bought the album, and have since gone back to check out those versions to sit alongside these, and Helloween’s versions are comparable. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s “Faith Healer” is a faithful version here (no pun intended), and “Mexican” by Babe Ruth also is an interesting song. The other song I didn’t know was “Juggernaut” by Frank Marino, and this version is a beauty, played at a great clip that mirrors the title of the track.
That leaves the first five songs on the album, by recognisable artists that would seem to have been highly influential on the band’s sound. “Locomotive Breath” by Jethro Tull is a classic favourite of many metal bands of this era, and Helloween’s version is excellent. One of the interesting versions is their take on Faith No More's “From Out of Nowhere”, given the modern age of the band, which suggests this was chosen because it was a favourite of the band rather than an influence. Their aggressive take on Scorpions “He’s a Woman She’s a Man” is fantastic, as is their over-the-top cover of ABBA’s “Lay All Your Love on Me”, one that sears the veneer off the table. And the last track is David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, a real fan’s closely held interpretation of Bowie’s classic.

Much like I have a saying for live albums – that you should really know by now if you have been listening to this podcast for a while – I have a saying about cover albums. And it is this – albums with cover songs have a shelf life. You will listen to them for a certain time, but eventually you are going to want to go back and listen to the original versions, because in most cases they will still be better or more interesting than the cover versions. And that is true here as well.
What I like about this collection is that there is a variety of artists, many of whom you will not have expected the band to choose, and that they weren’t afraid to go after some iconic classics to perform. The Beatles, ABBA, David Bowie... those three songs could have fallen completely flat if they hadn’t done a good job on them. Fortunately for all, they did.
I bought this on its release, more on a promise I made to myself after missing the original release dates of both “Master of the Rings” and “The Time of the Oath” because of the disappointment I had of “Chameleon”. And while I enjoyed it at the time, it wasn’t what I really wanted, which was a new album by Helloween. This was fine, and fun to listen to, but once it had served its purpose at the time it then went back on the CD shelves. Pretty much until the last couple of weeks. I’m sure I’ve listened t it since, but not in a memorable way.
What I discovered over this short time period since I have been reviewing it for this podcast, I have to say that I’ve found it more enjoyable than I remember. It may well be because I haven’t listened to it for some time, or that it is a novelty again, but it has been fun. The shorter time period availed to me at the moment, with so many episodes to produce, may also help in this matter. It IS a well compiled album, with great cover songs of terrific artists, and you can’t ask for more than that. But it won’t be like an album written by the band. You probably won’t listen to it multiple times, and you probably won’t take it out very often to listen to because of its content. But don’t confuse that with it being an average album. It certainly isn’t that. And for the marketplace in these kinds of albums being produced by bands, it ranks at the higher end of the scale.