FROM THE CRYPTS - CELEBRATING PAST ALBUM RELEASES in the HISTORY of HARD ROCK & HEAVY METAL… HELLOWEEN DOUBLE HEADER!
On October 31, 2010, Helloween released their thirteenth full-length studio album 7 Sinners via SPV/Steamhammer in Europe (Spinefarm Records in the UK).
A video clip for Are You Metal? was released October 11, 2010. The whole album could be heard on Myspace a week before the physical release. For the first time since 2000's The Dark Ride, each song on the album is a solo composition, i.e. each member has written both the music and lyrics to his song with no additional input from any other member. 7 Sinners sold 1,900 copies in its first week of release in the U.S.
Background:
7 Sinners, was released on October 31 in Europe and November 3 in the US. As previously mentioned, the band made it available worldwide for streaming via their Myspace page before its physical release. The name of the album alludes to the seven deadly sins.
According to Andi Deris, the album goes straight to the point; "After an acoustic album, we needed definitely something that shows the people without any question that this is a Metal album." The band toured to promote the new album with Stratovarius and Deris’ former band Pink Cream 69 as their guests. On April 5, 2011, via the band's website, it was announced that 7 Sinners was awarded 'Gold status' in the Czech Republic.
Commenting on the album, bassist Markus Grosskopf said; "After Unarmed we were ready for some real stuff, you know without having discussed what we are going to do everybody had this will to do some very heavy stuff you know. And that's what came out of it... I call it my natural born album. The first two tracks we had were Are You Metal? and Where the Sinners Go and that was kind of the direction we loved so we kind of left it untouched just gave it a heavy sound and put the other songs around it..."
Critical Reception:
In his review. AllMusic’s Eduardo Rivadavia wrote of 7 Sinners; “Helloween have always shown an interest in numerology, or at least the number seven, specifically, which they've incorporated in no less than three Keeper of the Seven Keys-related studio albums, and now, on their thirteenth career full-length, 7 Sinners (incidentally marking the band's 25th anniversary), they made sure to include precisely 13 songs, except, no doubt, in Japan, where the mandatory bonus track will trump any numerological strategy. So much for that! Anyhoo, the impact of these numerical concerns upon the band's musical output over the years has been pretty close to zero (Crap! There's another number!), since the German Power Metal icons have only rarely wavered from the subgenre trappings that they first helped define so long ago, and 7 Sinners, for good and ill, isn't about to change that. This is true even though singer Andi Deris shoulders the bulk of the songwriting load here, rather than founding guitarist Michael Weikath, and so there are numerous seriously infectious, speed-addled head bangers on tap (Where the Sinners Go, Long Live the King, Far in the Future), alongside several typically cheesy brotherhood anthems (Are You Metal?, Raise the Noise), the odd, heavy-ass ballad (The Smile of the Sun), but not really any major surprises, unless you consider the flute solo on the aforementioned Raise the Noise cause for shock. However, if there's anything that consistently distinguishes Helloween from most of their countless followers (and it's not The Sage, the Fool, the Sinner, which sounds like Blind Guardian), it's the band's frequently quirky turn of lyric and sporadic sense of humor, both of which are still very much intact in the likes of Who Is Mr. Madman, You Stupid Mankind, and the sounds-funny-but-it's-not If a Mountain Could Talk (ask Frank Zappa, c/o Billy the Mountain). But the primary takeaway of this review, if you hadn't guessed as much already, is that 7 Sinners is ultimately yet another extremely solid, occasionally fantastic, but pretty much standard Helloween album. Luckily, Helloween's standard efforts still prove far more interesting than the average power metal release, and that should please their fans and keep the band's career chugging right along into their next studio album. And counting.”
Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells
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