Boozy, woozy, snoozy, pumpkin doozy

Last weekend was a blur of consumption the likes of which I haven't seen since I don't know when. St. Patrick's Day is usually a handy time to get smashed and numb whatever ills March is bestowing, but I originally intended to repeat my Mardi Gras activity and sit at home by myself. Yet after a single bottle o' Killian's, I found myself back in DuPage, the county which spawned me and which which keeps calling me home. While I opted out of the Irish car bombs Jenny and her crew were serving, I managed to take down a few international brews which worked way better than I anticipated. Following that, my reinstated Hala Kahiki March gathering didn't have the epic scale as that one in Y2K, where the number of guests topped 30 and our collective bill topped a grand, but we did all right. A surprising amount of people bailed after saying they were coming, which was probably due to my making them feel somehow unwelcome even though they were invited... I'm sorry if that was you. We still overflowed our initial table thanks to the impromptu DuPage contingent. And since when will three Zombies and a Pele put me under? My system just can't process the booze like it used to, I guess. At the end of the night, I found myself back at the same Glen Ellyn dwelling as the night before, once again amazed at how soused I was. Recovery was slow. Mad props to all of you who made it out, and those of you who didn't... well, we very much missed you, but you would have had to sit on someone's lap, and Christ knows you didn't want that.

This will be a weird week at work, with the stupid primary election and all. I have been warned I may need to stay at the office until 2 a.m. or later on Tuesday. So I'll have to tape "The Shield" finale, but I can wear normal clothes and go in late. This gave me an excuse for an experiment I've been thinking about for a while. Some music writers like the "listening party" approach to writing reviews, but I've never tried it myself. It's big with web zines because of their capacity for instant publication. The approach is basically to taunt other music nerds with your supreme ultranerdiness: "Dude, I'm way cooler than anyone because I am a preferred member of the media, and I got the new Raging Boner album two months before its release, so I'm gonna flex and describe the whole thing track by track on my first listen. It will be like you are here with me, hearing the new Raging Boner opus in all its boner-popping splendor. Except you are not. I win at life. You are a shit and a nobody. Up the Bonerz!"

Now, I just got the new Helloween album a few hours before I started typing. (I hesitate to say it's "new," since it was out for almost half a year before I finally got off my duff and ordered it last week. I had been afraid of the Japanese import price, not to mention some other concerns I mentioned a while back.) So, this is like a "you're there for my first impressions" piece, but for a record that's already been heard many times by everyone else on the planet who would care about it - especially anyone who's also commemorated its creative source on their skin and had a bald girl serve them a hamburger in Hamburg, the prostitute-teeming German port town in which said creative source was founded. So here goes, let's nerd it up.

HELLOWEEN

Keeper of the Seven Keys - The Legacy

Disc One

1. "The King For A 1000 Years" [13:54] - This one, I already know. I got the "Mrs. God" single some months ago, and since I got that for the b-side "Run (The Name of Your Enemy)", I opted for the cost-effective German version that includes this semantically-challenged epic in place of the "single edit" of "My Life for One More Day" that's on the Japanese single. "King" definitely gave me some hope. As long Helloween songs go, it's up there with "Revelation" and "Mission Motherland" (the last song before this one where all five members got writing credit), although of course not in league with untouchable classics "Halloween" and "Keeper of the Seven Keys." Lots of tempo changes, choir punctuations, well-placed keyboard accoutrements and nifty little melodies, a fine example of Andi Deris' vocal adaptability. The lyrics, now that I'm actually reading them, seem to be the flipside of "Halloween," where someone got tempted by good and evil, chose good and became the fabled Keeper of the Seven Keys. I think this one is about a guy who is seduced and conquered by evil. The King is the bad Keeper, then.

2. "The Invisible Man" [7:17] - This is a lot more straightforward than the whiz-bang opener. Meat-and-potatoes metal seems to be Sascha Gerstner's songwriting forte, judging from his decent contributions to the last record. It's midtempo, and seems a bit plain after "King." The lyrics are pretty dumb, some sort of mystical guardian angel thing that may or may not have something to do with the "concept" here, which is admittedly vague-to-nonexistant enough to compare with that on the original Keeper albums. Still, the tune's pretty good. It picks up in the Weikath/Gerstner harmony solo. The piano tinkling during the fade-out is a nice touch, as is Markus Großkopf's ever-exploring bass, which is very clear in Charlie Bauerfiend's somewhat clinical mix.

3. "Born On Judgement Day" [6:14] - The last song started with Markus showing off. This time, it's new drummer Dani Löble's turn. He's got some chops. There's an awesome part in the middle of the solo where the rhythm section goes at it for a while. Otherwise, it's a standard fast Helloween sing-along, which I can always handle if it's actually Helloween doing it. Michael Weikath can write a song like this in his sleep and have it turn out OK. I wonder what his dedication to "all people in Brasil" means - for you, does the date Sept. 15, 2004 bring to mind some major event which I've forgotten in my American haze? It starts out "My mother died close to me," so maybe that's the day his mother passed away? In Brasil? I feel like I'm a bad fan if I don't know that sort of thing. Anyway, good song. Three for three.

4. "Pleasure Drone" [4:10] - Another midtempo Sascha Gerstner tune. The lyrics are interesting, continuing Helloween's legacy of making fun of simulated experiences, from the phone S&M gibing of "Mr. Torture" and the plastic surgery japes of "Silicon Dreams" to the video game scolding in "The Game Is On" - itself a curious sentiment going back to their debut and its Greig-quoting evil pinball machine anthem "Gorgar." But the apparent sexuality in "Drone" is a bit confusing. (I don't think a woman ghost-wrote these lyrics, but now that I think about it, the music is somewhat Accept-like. Is this a tribute?) At first, the lyrics address a dude who is crying over losing his best girl, telling him not to mope but come hang with the titular speaker, who will give him presents and detect "bad vibes" with its "laser eyes." I think it's supposed to be some sort of a femme-bot speaking, and this is another sly warning against hiding in fantasy when reality becomes hard to manage. But the singer is obviously a guy, and Andi Deris is not seducing in the same context as the devil character he played on the first song... I mean, I'm all for gender-bending, but I didn't know Deris was. Still, songwriter and guitarist Sascha Gerstner, who only joined Helloween on their last disc, was in the early incarnation of Gamma Ray side project Freedom Call, who had the balls to call their great debut album Stairway to Fairyland and kicked it off with a number entitled - I shit you not - "Over the Rainbow." It's not like it upsets me or anything, it's just curious. Not a bad hard rock/metal song, not the best here so far.

5. "Mrs. God" [2:57] - This is the single, the other song I've heard already. I didn't like it at first, but now I think of it as Helloween's tribute to straight-up power pop. Once the jaunty, mechanical guitar melody gets stuck in your head, resistance is futile. I think the lyrics are Deris saying, "OK, I believe in God, and I think God must be a woman, and She is messing with me since so many women have given me a hard time."Or something like that. And trying to be witty about it. I've always seen Deris' glam rock past and preoccupation with writing songs about the opposite gender as drawbacks, since it really wasn't a common Helloween lyrical theme until he joined. The subject nearly suffocated the last album. I pretty much don't like Andi's relationship songs. This one at least has the word "shit" in the chorus. There is a funny cow noise in it. It's catchy, not sappy, and over soon.

6. "Silent Rain" [4:22] - On the other hand, Andi Deris has a real problem with child abuse, and I can respect that. His first solo record had a really sad single called "1000 Years Away," a true story about a little boy who killed himself to get away from his drunken asshole father. On "Silent Rain," he writes a pretty bleak, sympathetic portrait of a little girl being sexually abused by her perverted asshole father. Only the music (by Gerstner) is either bopping away at a Judas Priest chug or a total German speedfest, and the chorus has that "triumphant" Helloween quality that Martin Popoff once smartly designated "the soundtrack to some sort of World Cup sideshow." This song rocks too much to be about such a genuinely depressing subject. The result is effectively bittersweet, but not all wispy as that might imply. A strange way to end the first disc.

I'm tigered. I'll save disc two for bright and early tomorrow.
...sleeping...
Yawn! Coffee. Smoke. German power metal. I'm awake.

Disc Two
1. "Occasion Avenue" [11:05] - The other epic. Forgetting the title and not having the disc until yesterday evening, I've been erroneously calling this "Fascination Street" in my head. (Although Helloween is prone to eccentric covers, they're one of the last bands I'd want to hear doing a Cure song.) It starts like the debut Helloween EP, with a guy scanning the radio dial, but instead of Billy Joel, here he gets snippets of "Halloween" and "Keeper of the Seven Keys." This song has more of a "modern" feel at first, the music is more rhythmic and not as melodic as usual. It's another good Deris showcase, even though I'm sure the title was somehow confounded by his German-English dictionary. It's about making moral decisions like the Keeper and the King, choosing which path to take. Of course, with lyrics like "Great will be your status/When you know how to lick anus/When you lie and swindle ruthless/And your biggest hero's Judas," it's nothing that's going to set the world ablaze. The music is good, though, and it changes up a fair amount once it gets going. I must once again commend the strong bass sound on this record, which befits the skills of the underrated Großkopf.

2. "Light the Universe" [5:00] - Here's an "If I Could Fly"-style pepped-up power ballad where Deris gets to duet with Candice Night, the cloak-and-corset-sporting singer for Ritchie Blackmore's willowy medieval project Blackmore's Night. She sort of sounds like Stevie Nicks, but less zoned out. She fits the pseudo-mystical tone of the tune. I haven't really loved a Helloween ballad since Deris and Uli joined in '94, and I don't love this, but it's not the worst. Nothing more to say, really.

3. "Do You Know What You Are Fighting For" [4:46] - That's the title - no question mark - and it's finally another Weiki song. It kind of reminds me of Maiden's "Wrathchild," contains some "bad attitude" '70s hard rock riffs and the anthemic chorus is kind of awkwardly inserted. The lyrics are classic Weiki, though, warning against following causes/leaders who manipulate and deceive. Michael Weikath has always been a paranoid, authority-distrusting dude. Not great, not terrible.

4. "Come Alive" [3:21] - This sounds silly at first, with another '70s hard rock riff right off the bat, then goes on to curiously resemble a Masterplan filler track. Songwriter Deris keeps interjecting a whoop of "wee! wee!" like a Teutonic Michael Jackson; it's kind of annoying. At one point he says "scream - on Halloween," but wastes a good opportunity to quote the band's earlier hit with a background screech. This song is really kind of bland. My least favorite so far, as I might have expected from that cheeseball title.

5. "The Shade In the Shadow" [3:25] - This is more like it. Deris redeems himself from "Come Alive." He says the word "shadow" about 900 times in this song, which lyrically is about as deep as "The Invisible Man." It's bog-standard Helloween, which means it at least has a defining characteristic and some individual personality within the catalogue. The cool "plummeting" guitar run during the chorus would qualify for that. This Löble fellow is quite a good fit for Helloween, I must say - lots of activity on the drums.

6. "Get It Up" [4:14] - Oh, Weiki. I think he intended to write another "Power" here, and he comes close. A valentine to fans as well as the band's own tenacity, with a Manowarish "thank you for still coming to our concerts" message I'm sure is very heartfelt. It would be a good choice for a single but for the grizzled band dictator's ridiculous word choice. For instance, the chorus: "Let's get it up, rock's here to stay/With the best years of our lives we paid our share/Yeah, yeah/Now tell me what is in our way/To push this right in the face every day." I could imagine this cerebral chorus surviving in the era of "Whatchoo gonna do with all that junk/All that junk inside that trunk"... if only it took such a courageous stand for miscegenation. One of my favorite aspects of Helloween lyrics, along with occasionally unusual subjects and generally agreeable positive sentiments, is how blithely unaware they are of how bizarre or outright dumb some of their phrasing is. A wise woman once pointed out to me that the reason power metal is so popular in non-English speaking countries is that the actual lyrics are never as important as how the melodies sound and how the words feel; this makes sense to me as an English speaker who enjoys how black metal vocals sound when spewing Norwegian or Finnish. Yet, the thought of a stadium full of South Americans hollering "Let's get it up!" while Deris flashes his pearlies in rock n' roll rapture is way too funny to me. The disc is picking up after a dull spot there, which is good.

7. "My Life For One More Day" [6:53] - Another fast one to leave on a good note. It opens like "Falling Higher" or "Kings Will Be Kings," with a baronial guitar harmony before the drums kick into steamroller mode. Cowritten by Deris and Großkopf, it's thus a step up from "The Shade In the Shadow." As usual, Markus' song is more aggressive and excellent without exception. The lyrics address the old Keeper story directly, the wizened warrior passing his seven-key-throwing-torch to a young buck. Apparently, the one sea of vice that was not properly locked up the first time is the fourth one, greed. This makes sense considering the context of other references to the story throughout the album. The Weiki/Gerstner harmony solo is very nice here. This is a pretty damned good way to end a Helloween album.

8. "Revolution" [5:06] - This is why I always get the expensive version of a new Helloween album. The bonus track is how Japanese record companies lure buyers from getting European or American imports, which are somehow cheaper than domestic albums over there. They require a Japan-only bonus track for their license of albums, and since Helloween recognizes that Japan kept them afloat during the '90s, they don't fuck around with remixes or live tracks - except for the wicked Accept cover on Rabbit Don't Come Easy, it's always been a real extra Helloween song. And being a Markus Großkopf composition, it is of course totally worth the dough. It's all there: thrashy riffs, memorable melodies, nice lyrics in the "Walk Your Way" tradition about believing in yourself and the power of inner strength. Without "Revolution," the entire double album is only 77:38 long, which means it could actually fit on one disc; the bonus track at least pushes it over 80 minutes and justifies the second hunk of plastic. On the U.S. version, you just get the lame "Mrs. God" video, and the packaging is wider, taking up more shelf space. I'm glad I finally ponied up for this album, and that I didn't go for the domestic. I'd give it three out of four pork chops (for Helloween... three and a half if this was any other band).