Helloween Tickets Praha 9

About Helloween

Helloween is a German power metal band founded in 1984 in Hamburg by members of bands Iron Fist, Gentry, Second Hell and Powerfool. It is said that the band is one of the most influential European heavy metal bands of the 1980s. Its first lineup consisted of singer and guitarist Kai Hansen, bassist Markus Grosskopf, guitarist Michael Weikath and drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg. By the time Hansen left Helloween in 1989 to form Gamma Ray, the band had evolved into a five-piece, with Michael Kiske taking over as lead vocalist. Schwichtenberg and Kiske both parted ways with Helloween in 1993; Schwichtenberg died two years later as the result of suicide. Between then and 2016, there had been numerous line-up changes, leaving Grosskopf and Weikath as the only remaining original members. As a septet, their current lineup features all of the surviving members of the Keeper of the Seven Keys lineup , in addition to the remaining members from the Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy-era .

Since its inception, Helloween has released 16 studio albums, four live albums, three EPs and 30 singles, was honored with 14 gold and six platinum awards and has sold more than eight million records worldwide. Helloween has been referred to as the "fathers of power metal", as well as one of the so-called "big four" of the genre's early German scene, along with Grave Digger, Rage and Running Wild.

Helloween was formed 1984 in Hamburg, West Germany. The original line-up included Kai Hansen on vocals and rhythm guitar, Michael Weikath on lead guitar, Markus Grosskopf on bass and Ingo Schwichtenberg on drums. That year, the band signed with Noise Records and recorded two songs for a Noise compilation record called Death Metal. The compilation featured the bands Hellhammer, Running Wild and Dark Avenger. The two tracks were "Oernst of Life" by Weikath and Hansen's "Metal Invaders," a faster version of which would appear on the band's first full-length album.

Helloween recorded and released its first record in 1985, a self-titled EP containing five tracks. Also that year, the band released its first full-length album, Walls of Jericho, which helped spawn speed metal. During the following concert tour, Hansen had difficulties singing and playing the guitar at the same time. Hansen's last recording as the band's lead singer was in 1986 on a vinyl EP titled Judas, which contained the song "Judas" and live versions of "Ride the Sky" and "Guardians" recorded at Gelsenkirchen. Following these releases, Helloween began the search for a new vocalist.

Hansen said in an interview 1999: .mw-parser-output .templatequote.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite@media}

"We wanted to go for a lot more intricate stuff on the guitar and more technical. So it was like getting harder and harder for me without having big experience on vocals. I never had lessons or anything and I was not that fixed on the guitar yet so it was getting difficult. On the other hand we thought it would be really cool to have a real front man, a real singer. We heard Queensryche, the first album that they did, and we thought wow that would be cool to have a singer like that who could be very stable on the high soaring notes and have a lot of expression."

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Helloween", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.