Of course.
I don't see why they wouldn't continue with all 7 members. Deris seems like a cool guy and him and Kiske seem to go along quite well, on stage at least. Deris also gets easily burnt out on tour voice-wise, so often they would start a tour with a lengthy setlist only to Wrathchild some songs after a couple of shows. This way they could cover for each other easily. Even Deris said that he's glad Kiske is back so that he doesn't have to torture himself with some tougher KOTSK songs. I just don't think they'd kick out Deris to retain Kiske if they didn't do it for this tour. I agree with you that it'd be unfair too.The Pumpkins United tour is due to continue into next year so I might get a chance to see it again, but if I don't then I'm glad I went but won't cry about not seeing it again. Roland Grapow, who wasn't invited on the tour, said in an interview that fans won't want Hansen and Kiske part ways with Helloween after this tour has finished and he's right, there will be clamour for an album and people calling for Kiske to replace Deris outright. That would be grossly unfair in my opinion as Andi Deris has been in the band for for than twenty years and has been the voice of Helloween for a long time. I would prefer Hansen and Kiske to continue working on Unisonic and for Helloween to continue doing their thing than for Pumpkins United to continue indefinitely. I'm not even sure why/how this tour came about in the first place as I'd always though that Kiske hadn't been on speaking terms with Michael Weikath and Marcus Grosskopf since he left after 'Chameleon'. But I guess that Kiske and Hansen working together again in Unisonic and both of them working with Sascha Gerstner in Avantasia paved to the way to some reconciliation, presumably with a significant amount of money.
Ok. So the show. And it was a great show. A great show from Helloween. The Pumpkins United show with Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske. Did you know they were playing? I knew they were, and they were great. So great. But I don't wanna talk about it too much.
This was the setlist from last night. On non-setlist matters, it was a cool show to see and everyone performed really well. The interaction with the current Helloween members and the two extra guys for this tour was really good and everyone shared the limelight fairly. One thing I did notice is that despite Andi Deris being a significantly inferior singer to Michael Kiske, Deris is a much better frontman and knows how to perform to a crowd. Sure, Kiske can have a bit of banter with the crowd but he has a touch of Tim Owens about him in that he's so focused on being great vocally that he forgets how to perform. Andi Deris almost seems to be an entertainer first, then a vocalist.
The Pumpkins United tour is due to continue into next year so I might get a chance to see it again, but if I don't then I'm glad I went but won't cry about not seeing it again. Roland Grapow, who wasn't invited on the tour, said in an interview that fans won't want Hansen and Kiske part ways with Helloween after this tour has finished and he's right, there will be clamour for an album and people calling for Kiske to replace Deris outright. That would be grossly unfair in my opinion as Andi Deris has been in the band for for than twenty years and has been the voice of Helloween for a long time. I would prefer Hansen and Kiske to continue working on Unisonic and for Helloween to continue doing their thing than for Pumpkins United to continue indefinitely. I'm not even sure why/how this tour came about in the first place as I'd always though that Kiske hadn't been on speaking terms with Michael Weikath and Marcus Grosskopf since he left after 'Chameleon'. But I guess that Kiske and Hansen working together again in Unisonic and both of them working with Sascha Gerstner in Avantasia paved to the way to some reconciliation, presumably with a significant amount of money.
On the setlist, Deris and Kiske dueted on a lot of the songs for throughout Helloween's history, including songs like 'Forever and One' from the post-Kiske era. Some of them were performed only by Kiske (e.g. 'A Little Time') and others were performed only Deris (e.g. 'Sole Survivor'). Obviously it was the Kiske-era songs that got everyone the most excited and a lot of people went to the bar during the 90s songs.Sad! The Kai Hansen section was cool and I definitely wouldn't have expected to see songs like 'Heavy Metal (Is the Law)' otherwise. Something the set could have done without was the stupid cartoon interludes. Without them they could have played another song, like 'We Got the Right' instead.
Still, it was one hell of a spectacle to see them open with 'Halloween' and play 'Keeper of the Seven Keys' towards the end with 'Eagle Fly Free' and 'A Little Time' in there too. Great show overall.
All these German Power Metal people. Too bloody many of them!Also Sascha Gerstner didn't do anything with Avantasia, you're thinking of Sascha PaethGerstner did play with Gamma Ray's ex-drummer Dan Zimmermann for some time though.
I thought it was Hansen using taped vocals as he's always been a terrible singer anyway., but it turns out it was Kiske. It all seemed fine to me, but I often have a terrible ear for this sort of thing.Thanks for the review. No playback from Kiske, like on the first nights of the tour?
I've been watching videos from pretty much all shows on this tour and he only used playback on the first and second show.
The worst thing so far is Kai's haircut... He looks ridiculous.
I've been watching videos from pretty much all shows on this tour and he only used playback on the first and second show.
True, he's looked the same and behaved the same on stage since the early 90'sWeiki looked pretty old (and smoked), but he already did so when I saw him for the first time 21 years ago.