Warthur
Helloween keep on pushing their matured power metal style on Gambling With the Devil, which is a perfectly competently presented album which doesn't quite work for me. Part of the issue I have with it is that they don't quite seem to know which way to go, muddling as randomly and arbitrarily as Satan's wheel o' misfortune on the (really appallingly ugly) front cover. (If I included front covers in ratings, I'd knock this one down to two stars for it. It's a perfect example of the really lazy CGI jobs bands tried to foist off on us back in the 2000s.)
Take, for instance, As Long as I Fall, which can't quite seem to decide whether it wants to be classic power metal, flirt with doing something a bit harder, or be easily digestible pop-metal of the sort which might adorn a movie trailer or a second-string WWE pay-per-view event. When the band get more focused, as on roaring album opener Kill It, this is a lot of fun, but there's a few too many clunkers on here for me to give it more than three stars.