Helloween - Pumpkins United

Well it had to happen I guess. Everyone in Helloween past and present buried the hatchet and not in each others back! Well at least put the hatchet away for another day and took the money and had a lot of fun for two and a half hours of happy happy Helloween.

No support, just a whole night's worth of happy metal at the Brixton Academy. The venue was rammed pretty solid with easily over 3k people at a guess but could be way more. There were a lot of people on stage as the curtain goes up and the band launches into the epic Halloween with both Kiske and Deris handling vocal duties.

The sound took a while to settle down and was a little incoherent at first but once our ears had adjusted it was a pretty decent sound with both vocalist's booming voices piercing the sky. Let me be honest here. Old school Helloween never really floated my boat at all. I came on board with The Dark Ride. I liked some songs here and there but never a full album and to be even more honest I don't really even recall half of these classics. Whilst I love the new material.

However I am far in the minority judging by the huge sing along's the classics muster up among the happy Helloween faithful. I guess seeing Kai, Michi and Weiki and Marcus all on stage together is the stuff of legend and the fans were lapping it up with a big spoon.

There was plenty of on stage banter with the boys with especially with Kai and Andi joking and taking the piss out if each other's age and ability to still perform. But perform well they did and Kai even sang one song, namely Ride The Sky. They played a very long time but had lost of short little intermissions with a cartoon video backdrop to entertain us. Two characters by the name of Seth and Doc with Pumpkin heads doing inane stuff. The videos during the songs were actually really funny and cool. Especially the character during Dr Stein was hilarious!

Each song had an effective video back drop to suit the song with even lyrics at times for these that fancied a sing along but had forgotten the words. Both Andi and Miki sang great to be honest with Andi more than holding his own. The rumours had been that Kiske had been having vocal trouble but he seemed great to me. Of course his warbling falsetto is the stuff of legend and he tested it to the max on a couple of ballads.

Believe it or not I actually missed the last two songs Future World and I Want Out as I was feeling dead after more than 3 hours of straight standing and bailed out. Even walking was preferable to standing at that point!

So the Pumpkins were United but I don't know if their heart was fully in it but they played with a lot of smiles apart from Weiki, he mostly never smiles of course. The cash was too good to turn down no doubt and the tour has been doing great business around the world. Oh and Kai's look is something else. Looks like a washed up glamster from the 80s still trying hard to be very 80s! You're not in Motley Crue dude!

Anyway an enjoyable night of classic Helloween material interrupted with the odd newer song. Good stuff if not amazing and for long time fans of the band, just a must see really.