MicShazam

Great! I seriously can't quite make a qualified guess what your reactions will be, so that's going to be fun to see.

Trollheart

Better Than Raw – Helloween (1998)

Hah! Love the tongue-in-cheek orchestral intro, and the title. ****ing great. Ah shoot though: there's no Kiske and no Kai. Darn: I really preferred Helloween with those two guys in. It's kind of a little generic really, though “Time” perks me up, and “I Can” has a lot of commercial appeal about it (hence its being released as a single, though not a successful one) – in fact, the album gets a lot better after that. Even so, it's a pale shadow beside the likes of Seven Keys, Walls of Jericho or even Master of the Rings. Then again, how do you make a power metal album stand out? Not so easy, though I do like the humour Helloween use here on some of the songs. Nice to see they don't take themselves all that seriously. But I wouldn't consider this one of their better albums, to be honest.

Track Listing
Deliberately Limited Preliminary Prelude Period in Z
Push
Falling Higher
Hey Lord!
Spit On My Mind
Revelation
Time
I Can
Handful of Pain
Laudate Dominum
Back On the Ground
Midnight Sun

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

MicShazam

I really prefer the Deris years, honestly. In fact, I don't even like the albums with Kiske on vocal, but I do have their debut album with Kai Hansen. Better Than Raw remains my favorite Helloween album, but it's hard to explain why. It's got something to do with how it sounds, with the songwriting (although there are a few misses in the tracklist), and how it's the only Helloween album where the band employed a trio of backup singers, which really adds a special vibe to a lot of these tracks. It's a very unusual decision and it seems odd to me that no one ever remarks on it.