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Helloween: 7 Sinners

Melodic Power Metal

4.75/5.0

SPV/Steamhammer
www.myspace.com/helloween
www.helloween.org
By Craig Hartranft,  10.31.2010

True to their advance warning Helloween's latest album 7 Sinners finds the band returning to the quintessential Helloween power metal form. Less progressive metal like Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy and more akin to recent Rabbit Don't Come Easy, or even those very early Kai Hansen days. (Don't start on that issue.) Fundamentally, 7 Sinners is gloriously over-the-top, blazing and and epic, Teutonic power metal. If you love the power metal genre, this is every thing you want and love: it's pompous, fist-pumping and toe-tapping, and richly melodic and thrilling. It doesn't get any better than this. If you're a detractor, than 7 Sinners has every thing you hate, and you can stop reading.

Some of that glorious metal exaggeration comes early in the catchy cliche of Are You Metal? Oh, yes we are.. But all that trademark Helloween power, intensity, melody, and grandeur soars throughout this album, with notable nods to Who Is Mr. Madman, Long Live the King, The Smile of the Sun, and If a Mountain Could Talk. Helloween shows some characteristically obtuse commentary on You Stupid Mankind. Yet, 7 Sinners turns mostly on what made Helloween's power metal famous and influenced so many of their European (and to a lesser extent, American) counterparts. Even better, however, is when Helloween stretches their metal wings on the longer pieces If a Mountain Could Talk and Far in the Future: the majesty and fury of pure European melodic power metal is affirmed. With 7 Sinners, Helloween demonstrate once more that they are not merely the grand forefathers of melodic power metal, but also the reigning grand masters. Recommended.

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With 7 Sinners, Helloween demonstrate once more that they are not merely the grand forefathers of melodic power metal, but also the reigning grand masters.

By far, Sweden's Eclipse is one of my favorite bands. Always consistent and always entertaining, Eclipse has been delivering their 21st century version of melodic metal rock since songwriter, producer ... [ Read More ]