Helloween – Gambling With The Devil – Review

helloween200Helloween

Gambling With The Devil (SPV)
by Scott Hefflon

The best Helloween album in years, no doubt. That’s not really that much of an accomplishment, seeing as many of their recent albums have fallen somewhere between barely passable and freakin’ embarassing. And I’ve been following the band since Walls of Jerhico. There’s the usual bit of ominousness, but mostly, there’s the expected bright and cherry and optimistic Helloweenisms, keeper of keys and soaring and marching on and all that happy hoo-ha. “Can Do It” tops them all, and, for me, it goes over some updrawn line. It’s TOO chipper and kinda trite, like those girl-power songs about, I dunno, today’s going to be a perfect day, or together we can make it better or whatthefuckever. But aside from that gob of frosting, Gambling With The Devil contains more and better classic heavy metal tastiness than any of their albums in many years, and shows their offspring that the old guys still got the goods.
(www.spvusa.com)