I feel a bit ashamed right now. Multiple posts in this thread and not one shilling Helloween? What is wrong with me?!
For those unfamiliar, Helloween is a metal band that's been around since the 80's that, if you haven't heard of them, you've definitely felt their influence. They're often credited as one of the originators of Power Metal, but you're probably more familiar with one of the biggest things they influenced; Guilty Gear. Daisuke Ishiwatari is a shameless Helloween fan. Co-protagonist/rival character Ky Kiske, for instance, is named after their first two frontmen Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske, and Jack-O from Xrd is an even more blatant reference to them. Oh yeah and Guilty Gear's entire soundtrack can be summed up as Ishiwatari desperately trying to imitate their sound. Don't believe me? Listen to this and tell me how hard the Guilty Gear vibes hit:
The Helloween iceberg goes deeper than that (hell even Mega Man referenced them), but back to the band itself. Helloween has gone through three vocalists. First was Kai Hansen (now the lead vocalist of Gamma Ray, which was also referenced in Guilty Gear by the way), who even by his own admission wasn't a good fit, then Michael Kiske was the band's frontman for awhile before leaving on bad terms. That's when Andi Deris, their current vocalist (and the one with the longest tenure by far) joined up, and it was a match made in heaven. Deris' mixture of oldschool metal falsetto and Brian Johnson-style gravel fit the band's sound like a glove. But what fit even better were his hammy antics...
See the thing about Helloween is that they run on pure fun. Their tongues are surgically grafted into their cheeks. I've heard them described as "not having gotten the memo the 80's ended" or "if Limozeen was a real band." The ham is on full display, and even their serious songs have a tinge of silliness or fun to them in some way. It's as if they know that no one on this earth rocks harder than they do, so they've got nothing to prove. Songs with the sickest riffs you've ever heard in your life all about aliens, inhumans worshipping an unexploded nuke, their private jet stranded in the US, a phrase Andi Deris' dad taught him, or just about how much fun they plan on having.
But then a miracle happened; in 2016 Deris managed to patch up the burnt bridges between Helloween's former frontmen, and managed to get both of them to rejoin the band. At first this simply resulted in a killer world tour called Pumpkins Unite. Then they made the first studio album with all 3 vocalists. Appropriately, it was a self-titled album.
And my god.
I cannot overstate how incredible this album is. The absolute best album ever released by one of the absolute greatest metal bands ever formed. Getting all the vocalists together was like acquiring all the collectable artifacts that unlock whatever broken endgame equipment it gives you (I will not be making any Avengers reverences, fuck that).
Here's just a little taste. two songs from that album:
If you have any taste for metal at all and you've never listened to Helloween, you absolutely need to change that. They're one of the lynchpins by which all other metal is judged. Hell, Guilty Gear cribbed like half its identity from it.
Oh yeah and they tend to just spawn other kickass metal bands. Any time a member leaves Helloween to make their own band, those bands are also awesome in their own right. You may recognize this song by Masterplan, a band also made up of former Helloween members, from that one famous AMV.