• New Music Reviews
• |
• Archives
• |
• News
• |
• Submissions
• |
• About
• |
• 
• |
• 

February 2025

• Robin McAuley: Soulbound
• Perfect Plan: Heart Of A Lion
• Craig Brooks: Desolation Freeway
• Mantric Momentum: Alienized
• Pattern-Seeking Animals: Friend Of All Creatures
• Crazy Lixx: Thrill Of The Bite
• Ginger Evil: The Way It Burns
• Dream Theater: Parasomnia
• Tyran: Tyran's Oath
• Saber: Lost In Flames

January 2025

• Wildness: Avenger
• The Ferrymen: Iron Will
• Labyrinth: In The Vanishing Echoes Of Goodbye
• Bonfire: Higher Ground
• The Big Deal: Electrified
• Landfall: Wide Open Sky

December 2024

• After Lapse: Pathways
• Illusion Force: Halfana
• Powell-Payne: Voilá

November 2024

• Sunstorm: Restless Fight
• Storace: Crossfire
• Voodoo Circle: Hail To The King
• Lionville: Supernatural
• Starchaser: Into The Great Unkown
• Empires Of Eden: Guardians Of Time
• Lonerider: Down In The Dust
• Seventh Crystal: Entity
• Neal Morse & The Resonance: No Hill For A Climber
• Beardfish: Songs For Beating Hearts
• Impellitteri: War Machine
• Brothers Of Metal: Fimbulvinter

October 2024

• Casandra's Crossing: Garden Of Earthly Delights
• DGM: Endless
• Daytona: Garder la Flamme
• Fate: Reconnect 'N Ignite
• Frost*: Life In The Wires
• Aries Descendant: From The Ashes Of Deceit
• Fans Of The Dark: Video
• Radioactive: Reset
• House Of Lords: Full Tilt Overdrive
• Cleanbreak: We Are The Fire

[ More Music Reviews ]

Helloween: 7 Sinners

Melodic Power Metal

4.75/5.0

SPV/Steamhammer
www.myspace.com/helloween
www.helloween.org
By Craig Hartranft,  10.31.2010

True to their advance warning Helloween's latest album 7 Sinners finds the band returning to the quintessential Helloween power metal form. Less progressive metal like Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy and more akin to recent Rabbit Don't Come Easy, or even those very early Kai Hansen days. (Don't start on that issue.) Fundamentally, 7 Sinners is gloriously over-the-top, blazing and and epic, Teutonic power metal. If you love the power metal genre, this is every thing you want and love: it's pompous, fist-pumping and toe-tapping, and richly melodic and thrilling. It doesn't get any better than this. If you're a detractor, than 7 Sinners has every thing you hate, and you can stop reading.

Some of that glorious metal exaggeration comes early in the catchy cliche of Are You Metal? Oh, yes we are.. But all that trademark Helloween power, intensity, melody, and grandeur soars throughout this album, with notable nods to Who Is Mr. Madman, Long Live the King, The Smile of the Sun, and If a Mountain Could Talk. Helloween shows some characteristically obtuse commentary on You Stupid Mankind. Yet, 7 Sinners turns mostly on what made Helloween's power metal famous and influenced so many of their European (and to a lesser extent, American) counterparts. Even better, however, is when Helloween stretches their metal wings on the longer pieces If a Mountain Could Talk and Far in the Future: the majesty and fury of pure European melodic power metal is affirmed. With 7 Sinners, Helloween demonstrate once more that they are not merely the grand forefathers of melodic power metal, but also the reigning grand masters. Recommended.

Note: All Amazon advertising in this review first benefits the artist, then Craig Hartranft also receives a residual. Click, and thanks for your support.

With 7 Sinners, Helloween demonstrate once more that they are not merely the grand forefathers of melodic power metal, but also the reigning grand masters.

After a brief three year absence from the studio, Swedish rockers Perfect Plan return with their fourth long player, Heart Of A Plan. This arrives after their vocalist, Kent Hilli, has been involved in a few other projects ... [ Read More ]