Live at Budokan

Live at Budokan is a two-disc record of Helloween’s first headline concert at the Nippon Budokan, played in September 2023. Victor Entertainment released it in Japan on 11 December 2024 (JAN 4988002942626) and Reigning Phoenix Music internationally two days later. Fifteen items, about two hours and one minute. By the 1990s the band were already drawing the kind of audience that hall takes, and yet the show had never happened. It happened with the seven-piece line-up that brought Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske back. The set opens on ‘Orbit’ and ‘Skyfall’ from 2021’s Helloween, then turns to ‘Eagle Fly Free’, ‘Future World’ and ‘Power’. Late on the first disc, ‘Kai’s Medley’ takes a slot of its own past the sixteen-minute mark, joining ‘Walls of Jericho’, ‘Metal Invaders’, ‘Victim of Fate’, ‘Gorgar’, ‘Ride the Sky’ and ‘Heavy Metal (Is the Law)’. The second disc runs from ‘Best Time’ through ‘Dr. Stein’, ‘How Many Tears’ and ‘Perfect Gentleman’ to a twenty-minute ‘Keeper of the Seven Keys’ and, last, ‘I Want Out’. Charlie Bauerfeind, who has made most of the band’s recent records, came to Japan to run the recording and saw it through to the master.