(Rated this album with 4 out of 10) Reviewed by
Glenn T. Pillsbury
from Los Angeles, CA USA
With a name like "Helloween" I was suprised at how un-"hellish" this album really is. This is my first Helloween purchase (based on reviews here at Amazon.com) so I've no knowledge of the rest of the band's work. Still, I knew not to expect Slayer or something more traditionally understood as "speed metal," but the overwhelming bounciness and bubbly, utopian optimism in so much of Keeper...I completely threw me. Lyrically, songs like "Future World" and "I'm Alive" stand out as the strangest of the the bunch, with lyrics such as "we all live in happiness, our life is full of joy" and "You just need a friend, together we will sing along." Huh? I can't avoid mental images of motivational speakers and 12-step groups here. The big "Halloween" song is perhaps the most musically interesting of the bunch, but its lyrics also seem aimed at a grade-school audience (why are Charlie Brown and Linus, icons of childhood Halloween experiences, in a song about a Celtic holiday?). And yet this album is somehow heavy metal. Like I said, I find this all very strange. The accompanying music to most of these songs, while "speedy metal," isn't really "speed metal" - way too many major keys, an element that also sounded very strange. While Keeper...I is certainly not a *terrible* album (and I'm looking forward to hearing Keeper...2), it's not at all as powerful or interesting as I thought it would be.
