Arriving at the near end of a summer release season that was mostly predominated by new albums from lesser known and up and coming artists, two big names in the legendary Helloween and rising black metal force Blackbraid are back with highly anticipated releases. To say these two albums have preoccupied most of my listening time is an understatement, because with the exception of brief forays into what my circle of metal listening friends have been checking out, as well as the indulgent dips into old stuff (Megadeth for instance has been top of mind lately because of their recent bombshell news), these two albums have been pretty much all I’ve been listening to. They’re both pivotal releases for each of the bands involved for different reasons: First with Helloween, the power metal veterans are delivering their sophomore album Giants & Monsters with this post-reunion lineup that saw Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen return to the fold, and following up their wildly successful self-titled album from 2021 that saw them revitalize their sound and surpass many fans already high expectations (this one included). Really the main question looming over the release of this new album is if it can continue and perhaps expand on what this expanded band lineup has demonstrated they’re capable of.
For Blackbraid, this is the pivotal third album in their career, and though their last album was good, it did suffer from a tiny amount of the sophomore slump in that it didn’t sustain the excitement they generated on their debut back in 2022. It’s not always this way, but historically we’ve seen a lot of bands careers hinge on their third album as the one that cemented their status as vital artists or perhaps even stars in the making. Blackbraid has everything they need heading into this release, namely a unique take on a subgenre that is oversaturated with similar sounding bands, and the budding hype generated by their previous two albums that made waves in the metal community. If they can make the most of this moment like Unto Others did last year with Never, Neverland, and rise to another level with an incredible release, they more than any other black metal band on the landscape right now have the potential to be the next biggest thing.
Helloween – Giants & Monsters:
I’m hard pressed to think of a better recent example of why the choice of lead off single is such a pivotal decision in how fans anticipation for a new album might be altered or skewed far in advance of its release, often for the worse. Most of the people in power metal circles I’m privy to were scratching their heads over “This Is Tokyo” back when it was first premiered back in June, and I suspect its mostly because it wasn’t a showcase of the band’s three vocalists in a fireworks display such as “Skyfall” was back in advance of the self-titled album in 2021. This is a fairly proto-typical Andi Deris penned tune, largely in the vein of other Deris penned tracks which means its built around a massive hook, with a pop-rock tinge to its hard rockin’ attack. It’s a good song, a solid rocker, though nothing earth shattering, but it sits well in the context of the album — as an advance single however it led to some disgruntled fans. The choice of second single being the Sascha Gerstner penned “Universe (Gravity For Hearts)” would have been a far more wise choice as the lead single, not just for Kiske’s lead vocal presence, but for its racing, autobahn ready power metal tempo reflecting all the shiny qualities of vintage Helloween that typically get power metal fans salivating. The underlying sentiment here is that hopefully those fans who were quizzical or unhappy about “This Is Tokyo” have a long enough attention span to have checked out the second single and the album, but in 2025 that’s not a given.
Rarely do I just dive into the nitty gritty of an album straight away in a review as I did above, but what preamble about Helloween can I possibly give? I was lucky enough to get a chance to listen to this in advance of its release, and I’m going to enjoy sitting back and reading the discussion shortly after its out to see whether the general consensus lines up with mine — which is, that this is a genuinely excellent Helloween album, a vibrant continuation of what was ignited on the self-titled, albeit falling just short of meeting that album’s lofty heights. Truth be told, that’s about the most I was realistically hoping for, because had the band been able to top the last one, we’d be talking about a top three Helloween album in their career, which is where Helloween comfortably sits in my view. To say Giants & Monsters is jostling with other slightly less than legendary Helloween albums such as the excellent Master of the Rings and The Dark Ride is a fair assessment, I guess where it would fall in the rankings is largely mood dependent for me.
What cements its status among such stellar company are songs such as the album opener “Giants on the Run”, a Deris and Hansen vocal combo over a tremendous riff sequence that even features one of those classic Gamma Ray-ian mid-song bridges that shift the entire tempo and tone of things into folky balladry, before catapulting us back into the stratosphere on the backs of a glorious harmonized lead guitar solo. I vacillate on whether or not this is my favorite tune on the album alongside two others I’ll mention below, but this is the best possible intro track for this album by far. Kiske’s introduction arrives on “Savior Of The World” and its still surprising how fittingly the songs he’s singing lead vocals on seem to be tailor made for him, even though the band tends to write with the approach that anyone could sing lead on any given tune. I think that Kiske is at his best when given that long, long runway on verses to deliver that gradual soaring, effortless rise that sends a tune airborne, and this was no exception. The following Deris cut “A Little Is A Little Too Much” acts as a palette cleansing change of pace, a mid-tempo groove based banger that I have been obsessed over since I first heard it. There’s a tinge of dare I suggest, glam rock to the chorus here, a T-Rex meets Def Leppard vibe with the way Deris deftly delivers the wordplay in the chorus that I find really endearing. I love this song and it is serious competition for my favorite on the album despite its straightforward simplicity, though I concede others might find this too poppy (read: Deris-y).
Hansen gets in on the solo songwriting with “We Can Be Gods” and “Majestic”, and its interesting to hear just how easily he can blur the lines between the hard hitting Gamma Ray approach that characterized so many of their classic songs with the more tunefully melodic approach that best serves Kiske’s vocals as on the former. I particularly love the classic Gamma Ray-ian guitar solo in “We Can Be Gods” that kicks in at the 2:44 mark, a sound that is energizing and familiarly comforting all at once. The latter, “Majestic”, is a far more ambitious animal, a lengthy, spacious epic that sounds like a close cousin to Gamma Ray classics such as “Abyss of the Void” and “Rebellion In Dreamland”. Its placement as the finale of the album is well chosen because it does have an all encompassing, epic quality to its segmented passages that are thundering and dramatic. It feels like an album closer, particularly the final few minutes where things convalesce into a rapid metallic attack with serious riffs and a scorching lead solo overhead.
I’ll conclude with what I suspect will be the most overlooked cuts on the album, Gerstner’s solo penned “Hand of God”, maybe the catchiest moment on the entire album, another in an impressive list of songwriting credits for the “new” guy. It’s possible that Gerstner is one of the strongest songwriters going in the band right now, able to craft tunes that are built with Helloween DNA while achieving the tightrope feat of existing outside the power metal mold. It tends to work spectacularly well with Deris at the vocal helm, as is the case here, and you’ll remember that one of the best tunes from the last album, “Best Time” was a Gerstner/Deris composition. Weikath’s other composition is also an ultra catchy monster in “Under the Moonlight”, one of the most cheery Helloween songs we’ve heard in ages, but its stuffed so far back in the tracklist that you wonder if its going to get lost to people doing a casual sweep of the record. But best for last is the Deris penned “Into the Sun”, a beautiful, melancholy ballad that of course no Helloween album goes without according to Weikath. This is a stunning song, and one of the band’s best ever ballads, a perfect duet between Deris and Kiske that highlights both vocalists in a way that reminds me of their joining together on “Forever and One” on the tour two years ago. The synergy between these two singers really feels cemented here, and overall, this album exudes a feeling that this lineup is permanent, and hopefully we get a few more albums out of them.
Blackbraid – Blackbraid III:
I was looking around like a doofus for a black metal album to compare this to, when it hit me like a ton of bricks. What Blackbraid’s straightforwardly titled third album really reminds me of in all its epic, narrative driven, album-wide cinematic scope is something like Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle Earth, or Kamelot’s Epica, with all those beautiful little interludes serving as connective tissue that links all the hard hitting, memorable songwriting together into one cohesive masterpiece. Yes, the new Blackbraid album is a veritable masterpiece, that word that tends to get casually thrown around all too often (you should see the press releases I get in my inbox) so I try to reserve its usage on this blog for when it really counts, and it really — really counts right now. This might be the most excited about a black metal album that I’ve been since Enslaved’s Axioma Ethica Odini way back in 2010 or Darkthrone’s The Underground Resistance in 2013… its been a long time either way dammit.
Everytime I listen to this album, which has been a frigging lot, I play it from start to finish, no skipping around, and that’s not just because its a no-skip album full of intense bangers. Its because this is one of those rare albums where the interstitial aspects of the album are integral to the listening experience as a whole. There are several pieces here, “Dusk (Eulogy)”, “The Earth Is Weeping”, “Traversing the Forest of Eternal Dusk”, and “Like Wind Through the Reeds Making Waves Like Water” which are instrumental in composition, yet varied enough in their makeup to stand apart from each other and arrive at intentional moments within the tracklisting. I normally excoriate bands for including intros in their albums, but “Dusk” is a mood setter that actually works, setting us in a headspace of a North American wilderness that matches the colors and tones of the album artwork. Similarly, “The Earth Is Weeping” is a canopy of strummed acoustic guitar figures and animal calls and the crackle of a fire burning that works incredibly well as a momentary pause between two of the album’s heaviest cuts. My favorite is the beautiful lead guitarwork that comes at the end of the flute laden “Traversing the Forest of Eternal Dusk” that mirrors the acoustic guitar melody. That crunchy, Dissection-y tone is awesome and I love its use in that spot.
But where Blackbraid really leaves its mark is of course within the metal itself, and these are the best songs that Sgah’gahsowáh has put together. The lead off single and first non-intro song “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of my Death” is song of the year list material, the kind of door breaking down ass kicker that reminds me of Immortal (clearly a big influence at work on this project as a whole). Immense riffs with propulsive power, Neil Schneider’s immaculately intricate percussion (he’s been on all the albums so far and his drumming has been phenomenal across the board), and Sgah’gahsowáh grim screaming like a possessed forest ghoul combine to supreme effect. I appreciate that there is an effort made to balance out the extreme elements with equal doses of melodicism, as on the lead melody that sits atop the anchor riff in “The Dying Breath of a Sacred Stag”, and indeed throughout this song, melody drips from nearly every twist and turn, even on the fading outro effect where we’re left with a lone acoustic melody (one of my favorite details on the album).
The a cappella black metal screamed vocal intro to “God of Black Blood” is one of those ideas that shouldn’t work on paper, and yet for its audacity it succeeds as a satisfying segue into its hypnotic riff sequence. The visceral intensity of the vocal performance on this song is impressive, and there’s an argument to be made that for all the focus on the folk instrumentation mixed throughout Blackbraid’s music that we’re not giving Sgah’gahsowáh enough credit for his vocal prowess. In a recent interview with New Noise Magazine, he said about the process of writing and editing new material, “When it comes to writing… I ask myself, ‘Does this make you want to bang your head fucking crazy hard?’ If the answer is no—if it doesn’t make you want to fucking punch a wall or some shit—I get rid of it. With a lot of songs, whenever I’m struggling during the writing, I say, if I was watching this live, would it make me fucking want to go crazy?“. That approach is what I hear on those aforementioned songs and on “Tears of the Dawn”, with nearly every aspect of the song devoted to sheer intensity and headbanging intentionality. Even on a nine minute epic such as “And He Became the Burning Stars…”, I appreciate that central focus on headbanging riffs and memorability that focus the sonic intensity into something you can move along to.
I’ve seen criticism come Blackbraid’s way, even with the new album, from a vocal few in the black metal world, particularly on Reddit where there’s a lot of mentioning the very similar Bathory riff heard in this record, and that much of the vocal approach is close to Immortal’s Abbath. I’m not too bothered about this, one because that riff sounds great within the context of the album, and two didn’t Blackbraid release a cover of “A Fine Day to Die” on the last album? Crafting your complaint about a band around a riff that bears striking similarity to one of their main influences seems silly. Black metal bands pilfer from their inspirations fairly often, and I don’t personally care about a minor instance of it to invalidate the entire work of an artist. And that his vocals alongside riff progressions sound vaguely Immortal-ish? Good! I love Immortal, it’s probably why I love Blackbraid too. I suspect most of the complaints from the black metal sect are based on angst at seeing this relatively new band get attention from unlikely places such as the New York Times and other mainstream outlets. Maybe it’s just about getting older, but when the music is this goddamned great I have zero ability to give a damn about stuff like that anymore. I’m excited about being this excited about a black metal album again, that’s all I care about.
