Helloween - The Dark Ride (2000)

With the plethora of power metal bands emerging at the turn of the century, it's easy to forget about the 'original' one, Helloween.  And I'm in danger of doing that, since they've never been my favourites.  But this album has raised their bar for me.
Like the title suggests, it's a topically dark release, with names like "Mr Torture", "Escalation 666", and "I Live For Your Pain", but the band has never been more consistent with its anthemic song-writing and performing. Such songs as "Mr Torture", "If I Could Fly", "The Departed", "We Damn The Night" and "Immortal" are amongst their best of all, showing great melodious skill and arrangements.  And, typically for power metal, the overall experience is not all that dark anyway.
Guitarist Roland Grapow and drummer Uli Kusch were kicked out after this, and they went on to form Masterplan. I'll be getting to them soon, but they did finish the Helloween part of their careers with one hell of a record.

****1/2