"Are you ready to metal?" asked Kai Hansen, the singer of Gamma Ray and, incidentally, one of the original members of Helloween.
The crowd yelled something that probably meant yes. I agreed.
And metal we did.
Power metal, and I mean really good power metal, has some amazing powers. It's triumphant music that can really lift you out of a dirty, brick-walled club like Station 4 and take you "Somewhere Out in Space" or let you "Ride the Sky." Life suddenly becomes a lot less complicated. A lot better.
When Gamma Ray finished, gently returning me and the rest of the audience to this plane of existence on the wings of a soaring guitar, I couldn't believe that I had just witnessed an opening band. Helloween would have a lot to live up to.
While hanging out in the bar, waiting to find out if German's metal legends would be able to do it, I stood next to some old dude who went on a loud rant: "Man, it was 1984! I saw Helloween on Headbanger's Ball. Fuck Metallica! Fuck all of that other stuff! Helloween was it for me and they've been my favorite band ever since."
When his favorite band took the stage and powered through their first song, I laughed as the bouncers dragged the same dude out of the joint. Apparently, he wasn't a big enough fan to not be a douche bag.
It had been over fifteen years since I had seriously listened to Helloween. My friend had made me a mix CD to get me psyched up for this show, so I had a decent refresher course on the classics. I had Youtubed their more recent videos, which were cheesy as fuck to watch but fun to listen to. Surprisingly, just from those two sources, I was familiar with about ninety percent of the band's set.
After somehow making "Halloween," from their legendary Keeper of the Seven Keys album, into something that seemed even more epic than it did on the recording, they started into their more recent stuff. The soaring "Sole Survivor" gave me faith that their new tunes would keep me just as excited as their old stuff. The crowd agreed, singing along majestically and painfully out of key.
Midway through the set, the singer grew concerned about the state of the crowd's vocal cords. "How are your voices? Still up and running?"
Everybody cheered. He must have liked the response, because he asked the same question after the next song, then again after the next. He asked it one more time, only this time the crowd's response was different.
"Still up and running?"
Mouths opened and the vocal equivalent of tumbleweeds spilled out. The crowd was no longer up and running.
Not really though.
Everyone yelled the same response. Helloween played through the rest of their set and left the stage. When they reappeared moments later, the singer had changed his wardrobe. A black top hat sat atop his head and a shiny red jacket replaced the brown leather he had worn previously. Not being familiar with Helloween's shtick, this seemed pretty bizarre to me.
For their first encore, they went through the clichéd process of introducing each band member and having them play a solo. Ninety percent of the time, this routine bores the fuck out of me and this was no exception, particularly since their new guitar player, decked out with retarded red beads in his hair, played like he was either in some cock rock band or a new metal band, any type of band other than the band he was actually in. They capped it off by playing all of 25 seconds from one of their most powerful and epic tunes, "The Keeper of the Seven Keys." What the fuck is the point of playing 25 seconds from a song?
They left the stage, leaving me a bit bummed out. They couldn't go out like that. For a power metal show to be a true power metal show, it has to end with everyone in the crowd shouting along, joining their voices together and getting that whole soaring thing going.
Helloween came back to the stage, this time with original member and current Gamma Ray leader Kai Hansen in tow. Without any mention of the fact that this was a pretty amazing reunion, they took us back to "Future World," which has always been one of my favorites, before closing out with everyone in the crowd shouting along to the chorus of "I Want Out."
Yep, definitely a true power metal show.