Helloween, a band who really don’t require any introduction, are back with their eleventh studio album. After almost 20 years of struggling with various degrees of success and multiple line-up changes they are still going strong. In fact, with “Rabbit Don’t Come Easy” the band seems to be taking a big step back in time, and after a very long time they at last manage to sound convincing again. Michael Weikath, songwriter extraordinaire, has taken over the reigns and has managed to steer Helloween back in the direction of where they belong: light-hearted and up-tempo power metal.

“Rabbit Don’t Come Easy” starts with a burst of power that’s called “Just A Little Sign”, which is reminiscent of the older Helloween work; a blast back to the past so to speak and admittedly this is Helloween at their best. “Open Your Life” continues this trend and I find myself admiring the happy speedy tunes, that are so typically Helloween, once more.

The third song, “The Tune”, changes the course totally and is a little strange to say the least, but fits well within the band’s image and lyrically reminds strongly of the funny Keeper days. The album goes on at a very high level and one after another good song blows from my speakers, from the extremely aggressive “Liar”, that shows traces of classic thrash metal, to the melodic ballad “Don’t Stop Being Crazy”; it all lives up to the name that Helloween has acquired during their long existence.

Finally we get to hear again what we have been waiting for for so long: happy happy Helloween. The band has gone full circle, like so many other bands have in the past few years and they show that the creators of power metal aren’t nearly ready to quit just yet.