I had to pull Virgil out of mothballs. Power metal demands witnesses.
He had been in winter storage for months, wrapped up and put away like a vintage sportscar nobody drives in the salt. When Helloween announced a date at The Fillmore Silver Spring with Beast in Black in tow, I peeled back the tarp, flipped the battery tender, and coaxed the old boy back into service. He groaned out loud but came along.
We were behind schedule before we’d even cleared Rock Creek Park. I had misread the start time, and by the time I realized it, we had the classic pre-show dilemma on our hands: eat or make the opener. Mercifully, someone at Taco Bell Corporate is a genius. A Taco Bell Cantina sits directly next to The Fillmore’s entrance. This was not an accident. Whoever greenlit the site plan is a saint, and deserves their seat in Heaven. We ate and made doors.
Inside the venue, I asked a few fans what they thought of tonight’s bill.
“Beast in Black? Good disco metal,” one shrugged. “Power metal with four on the floor.”
“They won’t win any awards, but they’re fun,” another said.
Every answer about Beast in Black came in that register: fun, fine, a good time, a party. Helloween was another subject entirely. For them, the room was bursting.
Beast in Black took the stage at 7:28pm, two minutes before they were advertised to. That’s either discipline or a Finnish band taking American start times literally, and either way I respected it. They opened with “Power of the Beast,” and within half a chorus I understood what the crowd had been telling me. This was disco metal with a four on the floor backbeat. There were no keyboards on stage, just a standard metal quartet, while layered synths and gang vocals poured out of backing tracks like someone had hit play on a second, invisible band.
Watch the official music video for “Power of the Beast” by Beast in Black on YouTube:
During their second song of the night “Hardcore,” a mic clip popped off one of the bass drums, and while the stage techs swarmed to reattach it, the drummer playfully swatted at them with his sticks. The kind of thing that would read as rude if he hadn’t been grinning. He was grinning.
“From Hell with Love.” “Sweet True Lies.” A *Berserk* mini-lecture before “Enter the Behelit.” I don’t begrudge them the manga lore. A band with this much backing-track density has earned the right to explain themselves.
“There must be a hundred backing tracks in this one,” I muttered to Virgil during “One Night in Tokyo.” Virgil, already smitten, nodded and grinned. His drink was going down too easily. So was the music.
During the verse of another song, I caught the bassist with nothing to play. He’d been rendered redundant by the synth layer. So he stole one of the drummer’s sticks and started hitting cymbals. Problem solved.
Until last year Beast in Black were a dual-guitar quintet. The second guitarist is gone, and the backing tracks have picked up his load. The hole is audible. Would they lean on the synths this hard if he were still up there? Hard to say.
“They have more in common with Bon Jovi or Journey than they’d probably like to admit,” Virgil said. Then, just as the frontman pandered deadpan to the USA — “you guys really know how to party” — Virgil leaned over: “Not to pick on Herr Metal, but Beast in Black are better than Herr Metal.”
By “Blind and Frozen” he had delivered his final verdict. “This is jungle juice metal. At first it’s delicious and infectious, and you want more. The more you drink the more you realize it’s mostly sugar and booze.” He wasn’t wrong. Nobody comes to jungle juice for restraint. The set closer “No Surrender” was chaotic and stupid in the best tradition of Accept and Twisted Sister, and they exited to “Burning Heart” from the *Rocky IV* soundtrack.
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Helloween’s drum kit, draped under bed sheets during the changeover, was finally unveiled.
It had four bass drums.
“Neil Peart would be embarrassed,” Virgil said, already four whiskeys into what would be a long evening.
It was a beautiful Pearl kit. Stark white shells, black hardware, a black-on-white Helloween pumpkin stenciled on each bass drum. The drum riser wasn’t a riser. It was a full-on second stage. Which makes sense since Helloween now have *seven* people in the band.
Let me list them, because the math is absurd. Start with the “young guns”: Sascha Gerstner on a custom snow white VIV guitar, face obscured by the biggest Pit Vipers money can buy; Daniel Löble on drums, commanding that four-headed Pearl monster. Founding member Michael Weikath on rhythm. And, not least, original member and founding father Kai Hansen on a third guitar and vocals. Bassist Markus Grosskopf, who has been there the whole time. And *both* singers, Andi Deris and Michael Kiske, sharing a stage that can somehow accommodate them.
The lights dropped as “Let Me Entertain You” played the crowd into compression, and then the band came out swinging with “March of Time.” It punched Virgil directly in the face.
The Keeper — yes, *the* Keeper — arrived via FaceTime on the digital backdrop to inform us that we were in for a treat and had been loyal for forty years. Then the band, against every instinct for rising-action pacing, dropped immediately into the slow acoustic opening of “The King for a Thousand Years.” All that firepower, and their second song was a ballad. It worked. Sometimes the cathedral makes you wait at the door.
Stream “The King for One Thousand Years” by Halloween on YouTube:
By the time Sascha switched his snow white guitar for a Candy Red variant, I had started doing math on the production. It was enormous. Digital backdrops, tiered staging, custom lighting rigs, seven musicians rotating through lead vocal and instrumental duties. It rivaled what Dream Theater pulled off at The Anthem last spring. It was pure spectacle.
“Frankly, you don’t need me here to make shit up,” Virgil slurred, gesturing at the stage. “Helloween has the gonzo angle locked up.”
Which is worth pausing on, because the last time I saw Helloween was not this.
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The last time I saw Helloween was in early 2004, at Jaxx Nightclub in Springfield, Virginia.
If you weren’t there in that era, Jaxx doesn’t translate. It was a dive. A legendary dive, but a dive. Low ceiling, cramped stage, a PA held together by faith and gaffer’s tape. The kids today have never heard of it and probably never will. The old heads still talk about it in reverent tones, and its loss is still felt across the DMV — the single gravitational center for heavy metal in the region, now scattered across The Fillmore, The Anthem, Tally Ho, Union Stage, Baltimore Soundstage, a dozen venues doing their best to host a scene that once had a home.
Helloween in 2004 were touring *Rabbit Don’t Come Easy*. They had just recruited Sascha Gerstner as their young gun. In hindsight, they were near the nadir of their career. So was traditional heavy metal’s popularity. Nü-metal was cresting, metalcore was about to redefine the American underground, and a German power metal band from Hamburg was not where the energy was. The stage setup at Jaxx was minimal. There was no money behind them. The local opener — a Maryland prog-metal outfit called Odin’s Court — fucking sucked. The crowd was small but loyal. I remember thinking, even then, that they deserved more.
Twenty-two years later, I am watching the same band play The Fillmore Silver Spring with *seven members* and a stage rig that costs more than the Jaxx building was worth. The room was full — roughly the Blind Guardian turnout from last November. Probably the exact same crowd.
Early 2004 was a tough time for me personally. I won’t belabor it: I’m better off now than I’ve ever been. Helloween, it turns out, are as well. Twenty-two years is a long time.
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Back in the room, Kai Hansen took lead vocals on “Ride the Sky.” “Into the Sun,” a new one, featured Michael Kiske and Andi Deris trading verses in an easy duet. “Hey Lord” was played with surprising emotional weight. Kiske returned to deliver “Universe” with the voice of a man who has aged well and knows it.
Watch the official lyric video for “Universe (Gravity for Hearts)” by Halloween on YouTube:
Before “Twilight of the Gods,” Kiske offered a remarkably reasonable take on AI: “if you don’t use it, you lose it,” with regard to human intelligence. Virgil, gesturing at the digital backdrop behind the band: “How many of these images are generated by AI?” A fair question. I had no answer.
Then “Hell Was Made in Heaven,” a deep cut from *Rabbit Don’t Come Easy*, which felt pointed. Daniel Löble followed with a drum solo, and for the first time all night you could hear the *other* bass drums.
The smoke break was the neat bit. With the other five off stage, Kiske sat down with an acoustic guitar while Deris sang “In the Middle of a Heartbeat.” Then they switched: Deris on acoustic, Kiske singing. It was the kind of moment that makes me think they actually like each other. For two frontmen sharing a band, that is not nothing. Daniel Löble, meanwhile, was presumably backstage soaking in a vat of the spice melange — my best theory for how a human being sustains four bass drums at full intensity across a marathon set.
A cover of “We Will Rock You,” led by Kai Hansen. A five-piece rendition of “Heavy Metal (Is the Law),” also Kai. The crowd, a mix of grizzled middle-aged heads and a respectable contingent of Zoomers keeping the faith, was in thrall.
The Keeper returned one last time to remind us it was Halloween tonight. And then the song.
“Halloween” is a twelve-minute banger. Let me be clear: it’s a great song. I love it. A pit finally broke out during it, the only real pit of the night. Kai Hansen was killing it. The whole band was killing it. It is, genuinely, one of their best epics.
It is also *very* long.
By the final chorus, the tank was running low. After they concluded, I remarked to the Helloween diehards singing along next to me, that maybe Metallica had a point about long songs losing the front row. Any fan of “…And Justice for All” knows the story. The songs are colossal and the yawns in the front row were infamous. The diehards next to me agreed immediately. They loved the song. They conceded it was long. This is the peace treaty you strike with a band you love.
There was a fake goodbye, because there always is. They came back with “Eagle Fly Free,” letting the rhythm section go for a ride. Then “Power,” during which shirtless men in the pit swung their shirts over their heads: the traditional power-metal mosh expression, more physique than aggression, more performance than violence. Manowar took that to its logical extreme decades ago with their posturing. Helloween’s fans tonight were carrying the torch in good spirits.
Then “Dr. Stein.” Before they launched into it, Kiske asked whether the crowd had any energy left. They did. He shrugged. “Well, I don’t.” He’s an old man. It got a laugh.
And finally, “Keeper of the Seven Keys.” Their signature epic. The title track of the landmark concept record.
They played about eight measures of it and said goodnight.
I am not kidding.
The band that had built a two-stage cathedral and populated it with seven members, that had summoned the Keeper via video conference three separate times, that had spent twelve minutes inside “Halloween,” chose to close the show with the shortest possible rendition of their most famous song. A gesture, a tease, a tip of the hat, and gone.
Maybe they read the room. Maybe they read Metallica’s old tour diaries. Maybe they just wanted to get back to the bus. Whichever it was, I took it as the band editing themselves. They had a point to make, they made it, and they did not belabor it.
I could use the reminder.
We walked out into the Silver Spring night at 11:15 PM, ears ringing. The 7:28 openers had fooled me into thinking I’d be in bed at a reasonable hour. Helloween played for two and a half hours. So much for that.
Virgil, already plotting his next move, leaned heavily on my shoulder and declared the show a triumph. Helloween in 2004 would not have believed they’d get here. Neither would I.
Here some photos of Halloween and opener Beast in Black performing live at The Fillmore Silver Spring on April 14, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Gerald Henry!
