It is almost impossible to know where to start with this album. We’ve had a greatest hits package where the songs have been re-recorded rather than remastered (see Gamma Ray’s Blast From The Past), we’ve had songs re-recorded acoustically (see a thousand examples), we’ve had band’s record with orchestra’s (Deep Purple, Metallica, Scorpions) – but this goes beyond that by combining all three in a greatest hits celebration of Helloween’s 25 year anniversary.
By doing this, you can only admire the band for moving so far away from the style that their fan base loves, and trying something different to spice up a boring old greatest hits album. There should also be no prizes for guessing that there will be a lot of alienated fans of Helloween after listening to this. And in the long run, those two sentences explain my feelings about this album – a brave and innovative move that is not to my taste at all and makes me wonder what is to come in the future.
The jazzed up version of “Dr Stein”, with sax and horns all over the place is up-tempo enough, and is bearable. The songs that follow though have a definite acoustic down-turning. In the long run, it is the toning down of the speed of the songs that creates more problems for me with the material than anything else. Playing them as semi-acoustic, and adding orchestral parts to them, isn’t completely degrading the original material, but softening the tone and playing at a slower tempo does make it more difficult to enjoy. Let’s face it – this is the kind of stuff that former singer Michael Kiske has been trying to pursue since his sacking from Helloween for pushing this exact kind of stuff!! Take a listen to his album Past in Different Ways from last year, and you’ll almost see the birth of this album in the process. If ever the opportunity had arisen to invite him back for a cameo, this was it!
“Future World” to me is just blah as a result of this. “If I Could Fly” isn’t so bad, as it was always the kind of song that could lend itself to such a reimagining. I think “Where the Rain Grows” suffers terribly from having the pace of the song ripped from its heart, it just loses all of its emotional value.
“The Keeper’s Trilogy”, a seventeen minute operatic meshing of “Halloween”, “Keeper of the Seven Keys” and “King for 1000 Years” is worth a listen, and is very well put together. Personally, I think all three songs could have been recorded on their own, backed by an orchestra in the same way as Metallica did on S&M, because all three songs sound great here. But they should have been played as they were recorded and then have the backing of the orchestra, rather than change the personality of the songs to suit an orchestra, as they have done here. Apart from that, this is the shining star of the album without a doubt.
“Eagle Fly Free” is practically destroyed as a slow paced acoustic ballad. It was very hard to take. “Perfect Gentlemen” doesn’t quite work for me either, but I can almost feel where they were taking it, and it possibly almost works. “Forever & One”, “Falling to Pieces” and “A Tale That Wasn’t Right” are also songs that could tend to lean in the direction they have been recorded here, but again I just can’t help but think that they were fine in their original format, and that by slowing and dragging out the songs they have done them a disservice. Possibly strangest of all, “I Want Out” in acoustic, with the help of a kid’s choir in the background, is one of the closest songs to working in this environment. Don’t ask me why – it just does.
So – very difficult to rate. As brave and bold as it is, it’s not something you could ever keep coming back to. Musicianship-wise it is terrific, but I just want the original versions in the long run. The score is based on the innovativeness of the idea, crossed with my genuine lack of feel for the appeal overall.
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