Light of Dawn

Light of Dawn, released by earMUSIC on 1 August 2014, is the second album and, as it turned out, the last. Two years of world touring had already proved this was a real band rather than a project: South America, the European festivals, then Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Russia. Riding that, they put out the EP For the Kingdom in May and arrived here. It was around this time that Michael Kiske said flatly that he had the best part of Helloween in his own band now. The instrumental “Venite 2.0” sets the scene in ninety seconds and pours straight into “Your Time Has Come” — a structure that states the record's posture outright. There are twelve tracks. The two guitars of Kai Hansen and Mandy Meyer mesh better than on the debut, and the production is tighter. Through the drive of “When the Deed Is Done,” the weight of “Night of the Long Knives” and the AOR lean of “You and I,” Kiske's voice sits consistently at the centre. When Kosta Zafiriou stopped drumming in 2016 and Kiske and Hansen returned to Helloween in 2017, the band quietly ended.