Born With A Hammer

Born With A Hammer is a solo album by Kai Hansen, a founding member of Helloween and the founder of Gamma Ray, released under the name Hansen. earMUSIC put it out worldwide on 18 September 2026, and Ward Records released the Japanese edition, GQCS-91779, the same day. It follows XXX - Three Decades In Metal, the thirtieth-anniversary record he made as Kai Hansen & Friends in 2016, after a gap of about ten years. BURRN! count it as Hansen's second solo album and note that the date falls one day before Helloween close their fortieth-anniversary world tour in Sao Paulo. Behind the record is the band Hansen assembled for XXX ten years earlier: Eike Freese of Dark Age on guitar, Alexander Dietz of Heaven Shall Burn on bass and Carcass drummer Dan Wilding, with Hansen himself singing and playing guitar. His son Tim Hansen, of Induction, played bass on a single track last time and is a full guitarist here. Freese, Hansen and Dietz share the production credit. Three songs came out ahead of the album, each with a video on earMUSIC's channel: "Feeding The Beast" in June 2026 and "Wait And See" in September with official videos, and "Welcome To Life" in August with a lyric video. The album proper runs to ten songs. The Japanese pressing adds two more, Kai Hansen's own mixes and masters of "Born With A Hammer" and "Wonderland", for twelve tracks in about 56 minutes on one CD, and comes with a Japanese booklet and translated lyrics.