Helloween - The Time Of The Oath (1996)

1996 starts with the continued comeback of Helloween. The previous MASTER OF THE RINGS certainly saw them coming back on track, and this album (based on the prophecies of Nostradamus, and the first with drummer Uli Kusch) confirms it.  I'm not overly excited by the opening couple of songs, but it picks up with "Wake Up The Mountain", while the powerful but still gentle ballad "Forever And One (Neverland)" is good, and I get a bit of a kick out of the childishly rebellion song "Anything My Mama Don't Like". I've never been a big fan of these German chaps in the first place, but The Time Of The Oath (which is dedicated to former drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg, who threw himself in front of a subway train in 1995) is certainly as good as anything they've done thus far.

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