Gamma Ray/Helloween - 08 Dec 2007 - Arenan

Skit tråkigt! That's all I have to say about this show.

You know, I sort of set myself up for it. I'm not into the German power metal thing, and I went anyways. To be honest, I spent most of the night catching up with some old scensters and trying to avoid the occasional drunk, creepy metal fan.

That said, there were still some parts of the show (that I managed to bear through), that were fun.

Now Gamma Ray and Helloween share a sort of incestuous relationship. For those of you who don't know the background of these two bands, there is one common thread between them: Kai Hansen. Power metal fans that really dig Helloween and Gamma Ray all claim that Kai Hansen is the key to the bands' quality.

When it comes to Helloween, I can agree. The first 2-3 albums (up to "Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part II") are excellent speed/power metal albums. But Kai left Helloween to start Gamma Ray. Seemingly as a consequence, Helloween lost some of its speed metal edge - but Gamma Ray didn't inherit any of Kai's speed metal spirit at all. Instead, both bands went treading down the path of power metal. And, not being into the German power metal thing, I lost interest.

Even so, Helloween had one of the cutest sets and stage acts I've seen. They just released their 13th (!) album, "Gambling with the Devil", and had a stage show to match. Interrupting the ever-tedious drum solo, the three remaining members dressed up in midget costumes, stood amid a puppeteer's curtain and proceeded (in a voice-altered high-pitched German-English, as if just normal-pitched German-English wasn't hard enough to understand) to make fun of the drummer doing the drum solo - and got him to play arguably the easiest (and most banned) song in rock music...."Smoke on the Water".

Gamma Ray, on the other hand, was....well....power metal tedious. At least for me. The fans, though, seemed to eat it up.

\m/
-parastoo-