What a surprise, really I wasn't prepared to this album and I must admit that I'm really impressed here.

This is the best album with Master Of The Rings since The Keepers for me. This one, like Master Of The Rings in is own time, is really special, darker than everything Helloween ever did and I can tell you that Andi Deris must have eaten Lion for his brunches cause I'm impressed. I always loved his voice, but here it's simply amazing ! As for the music, it's also darker, everything in this album is darker, don't worry it's not black metal, even though I was a bit scared with if the "I Could Fly" single, because of it's dark atmosphere. In the end it's really welcomed.

The album holds a lot of different metal tunes, from typical speed metal "a la" Helloween, to heavy, very heavy mid-tempo songs, metal hymns, ballad... and so on. You get astonished by every single song, even if they are one or two songs that I'm not fund of like Mirror, Mirror. First of all, you must be stupid to take such a title after the fabulous song that Blind Guardian made with the same title. The thing is that the song is slow and boring were BG made a fucking fast speed metal song that no one can ever forget... Anyway, this is a simple detail cause the album is filled with exceptional songs, all different, all taking you by surprise and that really is something. The metal hymn All Over The Nations is also one of the track with which I have a problem... probably because of the child-like melody it's based on. But let's talk seriously now... songs like Mr. Torture, Salvation, The Departed, I live for your Pain, We Damn The Night, Immortal, The Dark Side and even If I Could Fly are so excellent, so surprising, so new that it makes me forget about these two medium songs. When you listen to the Dark Ride, you dive into a new atmosphere, somehow you fall into the dark side of your mind and this leaves you wondering all the way... amazing !You even get electro metal in the way (Departed)... and the worst is that it will simply blow you away !

As for the production : it's perfect, simply perfect !
Now, I must say that I'm very disapointed with the sampler we received, cause the songs are cut (fade out) 1 or 2 minutes before the end, sometimes before the solo even start... so I must admit that it's not easy to make a review under these circunstances and somehow it's not really smart from their management. I guess this is all about the MP3 problems and people downloading some albums before they go out... I must agree that this sucks but I'm not sure it's the right way to prevent it and furthermore I don't think that this can simply be prevented. The people downloading entire albums and not buying albums are the same people that once made tape or Minidisc copies... does that change anything ? not really, these were never potential customers anyway... In this case for the review it's not helping me judging the album as a whole and I might adjust the quote later on once I've listen to all of the album cause you never know if you might love a song more because it goes Crescendo in the end or in the contrary be disappointed by some vocal parts (I seriously doubt in this case of course :) ) or by the guitar solo ! So don't be surprised if the quote changes in a few weeks.

I will conclude by saying that I receive a slap in the face with this new Helloween and after the big joke called "Better Than Raw" : Helloween are back on track and ready to kick some serious ass ! Long live Helloween !!! Every metal fan, whatever the style you prefer, should consider owning this record in their collection, there's so many things in there... for me it's really a blind buy !