HELLOWEEN — Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy (review)

HELLOWEEN — Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy album cover Album · 2005 · Power Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Time Signature
Kings for a thousand years...

Genre: power metal

When Kai Hansen left Helloween after the release of "Keeper of the Seven Keys, part II", the band suffered a blow that took them a long time to recover from. The first couple of albums they released without Hansen were considered inferior to anything released with Hansen in their ranks, and it took the band a long time to climb back up the mountain from which, like Olympic gods of metal, they used to behold the world of power metal. "Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy" must have been recorded on that mountain, as it manages to capture a lot of the Helloween of the 1980s.

The massively epic opener of disc 1 "The King for a Thousand Years" is as power metal as it gets, clocking in at almost 14 minutes, dealing with a slightly fantasy-related theme, packed with operatic choirs and symphonic keyboard effects, and a spoken introduction by Christopher Lee himself. This track is followed by another epic, the seven minutes long "Invisible Man" which, curiously, has a certain 1980s new wave feel to it at times, but whose anthemic chorus is very captivating. This track is followed by the hard rocking, but perhaps slightly generic heavy metal tracks, "Born on Judgment Day" and "Pleasure Drone". The next track "Mrs. God" is a less textually fat track, but I like it for challenging the traditional gender patterns of western worldviews and challenging the very notion of god in general.... and there's no denying that its chorus is challenging as hell. "Silent Rain" is another more traditional heavy metal track, but it rocks mercylessly, and it does contain sufficiently enough Helloween-style neoclasiical riffing and an epically anthemic chorus.

Disc 2 opens with another epic track - "Occasion Avenue" - which does not quite match up to any of the epics on disc one, but it's still a good track. The power ballad "Light the Universe" is one of the weaker tracks, but it chorus is doubtlessy catchy and just invites to some singing along... and it features Candice Night (Ms. Blackmore) as a guest vocalist. The reamining tracks are all power metal rockers of mostly good quality, all of which also draw heavily on traditional heavy metal.

All in all, this is an album worthy of being called "Keeper of the Seven Keys" although it does not quite measure up to the original two "Keeper of the Seven Keys" releases. Still, I think that most fans of power metal would like it a lot.
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