HELLOWEEN „Rabbit Don't Come Easy”

Happy, Happy Helloween!!!

Well, German metal maestros are back with a very good album, “Rabbit don´t come easy”, the tittle tries to capture the difficulty of making magic, not with a hat but with music. While at the start of the recording the magic didn´t seem to be with the band, (problems finding a healthy drummer, the departure of Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch, and the apparent lack of commitment from the rest of the them) in the end, the opening track “Just a Little Sign”, by far the best in the album, shows that Helloween are still one of the Top bands in the business. Even when this album is not in the same level that they reached with “The Dark Ride” Its still one of those CDs that grows in you every time you listen to it.

The aforementioned song has a good doze of speed and a classic Happy chorus, the song is very short although, when you get to the second song “Open your Life” you start getting that familiar feeling that impregnates every good Helloween album something interesting, but not great, is about to happen, the chorus is kind of slow and simple and that´s a problem that shows up in most of the album.

“The tune” ranks second in my personal taste, the song is long, clocking at 5:36, but It never loses the punch, the lyrics are intelligent and the chorus is simple but catchy, next is a song that sounds to me like the mixture of “Perfect Gentleman” and “If I Could Fly”, too simple and repetitive.

“Sun for the world” has an Arabic sounding intro and tells a weird story, probably taken from a tale or something, the idea in “Don´t stop being crazy” is pretty good but it ends up being a ballad, the type the guys from Hellloween have done lately. “Do you feel good”, “Listen to the flies”, and “Back against the wall” are all heavy but I´d call them average when compared with, for example, “Hell was made in Heaven”, the chorus has a strange Kiss feeling on it but it is good anyway, another happy sounding track.

The album closer “Nothing to say” proves the musical versatility of this band, this song is a very good experiment, they blend 80´s hard rock, jamming and even some reggae with their unique sense of humor, does it sound weird? wait until you listen to it. The edition I got has a rather pedestrian cover of Queen´s “Sheer Heart Attack”, being a long time Queen fan, this song doesn´t do anything for me.

This album can be seen under two different perspectives, for the Keepers era fans (the vast mayority of Helloween fans) the album will bring great memories back, but for those who, like me, enjoyed the dark and deep sound of “Better than Raw” and “The Dark Ride” It will be sort of a letdown, since the production is not even close as polished as in the mentioned albums.

Aaaah! For those curious ones, I actually consider this album a much better work than the one from former Helloween members based “Masterplan”, but in the words of Helloween. “All that we learn is just one point of view”.

note: 7.5 out of 10

Line-up

Andreas Deris (Vocals)
Markus Grosskopf (Bass guitar)
Michael Weikath (Guitars)
Sascha Gerstner (Guitars)
Stefan Schwarzmann (Drums)