Helloween - High Live DVD
Sanctuary
Power Metal
16 songs ()
Release year: 2002
Helloween, Sanctuary
Reviewed by Ben
Archive review

While High Live is definitely not a new release the fact that it has been re-issued in DVD format is worthy of a review. For awhile now, especially since about 1999 to now the visual part of High Live was hard to come by being only released in limited quantities on VHS. Well Sanctuary saw fit to release it in DVD format and for that I’m thankful. A straight to DVD conversion with only some animated menus and a show review by Malcom Dome this is exactly like the VHS version yet more convenient. The biggest and only real flaw is that between songs there is a short fadeout, fade in to the next one. To some people this might be a minor aggravation and to others a huge glaring flaw, for me it is more in the middle an annoyance but not something I cried about.

Filmed in Milan, Italy and Gerona and Pamplona, Spain in 1996 on Helloween’s Time of the Oath tour High Live captures the band at its best, live. They run through a setlist that is heavy on the Andi Deris era, with only four out of the sixteen songs from the Kiske years. They do include The Chance off of Pink Bubbles Go Ape which is nice but I would have preferred the godly Mankind instead. The other songs that come from the Kiske years are the expected Eagle Fly Free, Dr. Stein, and Future World. Andi handles the daunting task of pulling off the old fan favorites really good, in fact I think Future World completely rips live its a lot more festive, at least this live rendition. It’s amazing to see and hear the crowd sing at the top of their lungs that intro verse to the song, its just awe inspiring, I hope one day I can do that to a crowd. Speaking of Andi he is excellent as a frontman he keeps the crowd going and looks like he’s having a blast on stage. He is constantly giving it his all and moves around a lot with a vide variety of singing poses, instead of just standing still and whatnot. Weiki’s just chilling off to the side smoking a lot of cigarettes while Markus and the now departed Roland are smiling a lot too and look like they are definitely enjoying themselves. Roland even does some lead singing in Steel Tormentor and has a vocal solo spot before Mr. Ego. The camerawork is satisfactory as well, it has good angles, clear shots and has a bunch of split views of say Weiki’s fingers when he’s busting out a solo and Markus headbanging. For the guitarists out there you can be happy cos there’s many close ups of either Roland or Weiki’s fingers and fret positions during the solos.

There are some definite scorchers here such as the first three killers, We Burn, Wake Up the Mountain, and Sole Survivor. I rediscovered Wake Up the Mountain with the High Live album, (this DVD is new to me, well last Christmas, but I have been rocking out to High Live since 1998 now) cos of the killer double harmony lead in it. I also gotta point out that Andi looks cool as hell with that black leather trenchcoat on in the first few songs. The only real duds for me are Why? and the boring Mr. Ego. I have never been able to get into Mr. Ego at all it just does nothing for me, I would have been much better off had they played Still We Go, March of Time or even Gorgar. Eagle Fly Free is just glorious to witness and makes me smile every time I hear it and Time of the Oath is a heavy, dark sounding monster live. My two personal favorite moments come from Power with the extended sing along session and the performance of In the Middle of a Heartbeat. For the latter it is just Andi with an acoustic guitar all by himself on the stage and as a raw stripped down version this is killer, I love it, ever since hearing it I wish they would record it in the studio like this. Other songs that sound a whole hell of a lot better live than on the studio albums are Before the War and the slightly different intro to Perfect Gentleman.

For Helloween fans this is a worthy purchase to add to your collection. It has the band performing some awesome songs live and it is on a much better format than VHS, I can now watch this eight million times without having to worry about my tape getting eaten by my ghetto-tastic VCR player. This also comes in 5.1 surround sound for avid DVD-heads out there to put you in the middle of the action. For many of us this is as close as we’ll get to experiencing the magic of Helloween live especially now that Roland and Uli are out of the band and they are trying to steer away from the songs that those two wrote, which is a shame.

Killing Songs :
Sole Survivor, Eagle Fly Free, Power, and In the Middle of a Heartbeat (acoustic)
Ben quoted no quote
Other albums by Helloween that we have reviewed:
Helloween - Helloween reviewed by Ben and quoted 84 / 100
Helloween - Master Of The Rings reviewed by Ben and quoted 73 / 100
Helloween - Better Than Raw reviewed by Ben and quoted 94 / 100
Helloween - United Alive In Madrid reviewed by Ben and quoted no quote
Helloween - Straight out of Hell reviewed by Chris and quoted 92 / 100
To see all 23 reviews click here
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