Helloween & Gamma Ray

That's nowhere near my birthday. However, I am not a Gamma Ray fan.
 
I love Helloween. But I'm not very fond of Gamma Ray. Hansens vocals are bad, for starters.

Helloween on the other hand is just better. They have more variety in their music. They aren't afraid to take chances. I just with they had continued in the direction of The Dark Ride.
 
Hansen's vocals were pretty bad on the first Helloween albums, but he got better. Rebillion in dreamland is great, including his singing. And I like Gamma Ray's 90's albums more than Helloween's, at least they were more consistent.
 
Did someone else sing for Gamma Ray at first? Like on an album? I think his name was Ralph, who I read tried hard to replace Halford in Priest.

I can't listen to Walls of Jericho because of his vocals. I'm sure he's gotten better, but I just dont dig his voice. And i don't think he should be considered the 'Godfather of Power Metal' over Michael Weikath. They both wrotes the songs for those 2 albums. They both wrote hit songs that are still classics and remembered. I'v always liked Weiki's songwriting over Hansen, because Weiki is generally more melodic when it comes to these things.

On another note, i have a question for you all! Do you think Sascha Gerstner was a good replacement for Roland Grapow?

My opinion is: when Rabbit came out, i wasn't a HUGE fan of it. But i liked a lot of it. I also really liked the songs Gerstner wrote. And the ones he wrote for Legacy were some of the best on it. But with 7 Sinners and Step out of hell, his songs are mostly my least favorite. Some of them a quite lousy. I love these 2 albums, except a couple songs, which he happened to write.
Grapow wrote some crappy Helloween songs, like Take Me Home, and Still We Go i don't like. The Chance I like and Mankind, and his songs on Dark Ride were the best I'd say. With Masterplan, especially the first 2 albums with Jorn, he knocked it out of the park.
So I think losing Grapow was a big loss for Helloween. He made some great contributions and was at the top of his creative ability when they fired him. I think with Gerstner, he needs more direction when writing songs. I love 7 sinners, but a couple of his are just terrible, just like with the newer one too.

So i think when it comes to talent at playing and techinal skills, Gerstner is a good replacement. But with creative input he needs to do better. A lot of what he writes seem to be mid-tempo songs. That's fine it doesn't always have to be fast. But they'r just not exciting. He impressed me with Rabbit, but since then he's fallen from grace IMO. But live i'v noticed the he really steals the show from Weiki. He always seems to have the better parts, and plays the majority of the solo's. I'm a big fan of Weiki and I'm always looking to see him go into a solo but mostly it's Sascha or a dual harmany.

I'm done ranting.
 
Ralph Scheepers sang on 3 albums before trying to get into Priest and then Kai Hansen decided to do the vocals himself. I find that Kai Hansen's vocals are fine (and they are much better than Jericho) in Gamma Ray as a whole, but I've definitely noticed that they have gotten worse since around Majestic (2005).
 
Majestic is the last Gamma Ray album I bought. Great album, but I've lost interest since then.

I can't speak for Sascha or Dani as replacements for Roland and Uli as I've listened to very little Helloween with them. I just tired of the usual Helloween album output of Great, mediocre, ok, ok, GREAT.
 
I think Helloween is great because they stand out from all the other power metal bands out there. Ever listen to the Unarmed album? It's not metal, but i like it a lot. It's for Helloween fans that don't only listen to heavy metal.

They've been on a roll lately. From Gambling with the devil, each album got better then the next. Gambling was a great CD, very classic Helloween style they played on it. 7 Sinners was even better, and Step Out of Hell was just amazing. They've over the years, despite always sounding like Helloween, have often had a different sound with each album. I think with they're last 3 albums they have finally found a sound that they'll probably integrate into future music. And even tho the last 2 sounds like companions in a way, they're also very different. 7 Sinners was more brutal and hard and darker, and Steo out of Hell had more of a positive theme and happier melodies, chorus' etc. But still sound very much like the same band.
 
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