HEAVENS GATE — Livin' in Hysteria (review)

HEAVENS GATE — Livin' in Hysteria album cover

Album · 1991 · Power Metal

4.5/5 · 2018-04-04
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If it were just that little bit better known I might say that the cover art of Livin' in Hysteria (1991), the second album by German power metal act Heavens Gate, was an iconic one from the nineties metal scene. A blue dragon lounges back on his rock smoking a pipe while his human slave sweeps up what appears to be the (also human) remains of his last meal. For some reason though Heavens Gate isn't a band I see mentioned half as much in relation to the early German power metal scene that they were most certainly a part of, unlike their temporaries including Helloween, Gamma Ray, Blind Guardian and Rage. It was this cover that first drew me to this album. It's definitely a strking one. The CD was a chance find in a used music shop and I had no idea who the band were. The owner of the store (now sadly closed down for some years) allowed me to sample the album. I listened to the first track and then bought the album instantly. As an aside I also got my first albums from Virgin Steele and Chastain in that shop at the same time.

Heavens Gate in 1991 seemed to exist to fill the void that Helloween created by drifting away from the power metal style that they had created with their classic Keeper of the Seven Keys albums. Sure, Kai Hansen had already debuted with Gamma Ray a year earlier than this, but I've always found the sound that Heavens Gate had on Livin' in Hysteria to be a closer representation of the early power metal style that Helloween played on their classic duo, right down to the real old school metal production sound that hasn't yet been able to let go of the eighties.

This album does in fact have quite a lot in common with classic eighties heavy metal, including the vocals from Thomas Rettke, which are old school metal to the bone rather than the very melodic styles that power metal would become known for over the next decade and had in fact already been used by Michael Kiske in Helloween. Likewise their music is not drenched in keyboards or symphonic elements. In fact the biggest reason that Livin' in Hysteria is power metal is the speedy guitar riff style employed by Sascha Paeth and Bonny Bilski, which shows them to be something more than heavy metal or speed metal. It's only 1991 so it would be fair to say the sound is still on stepping stones in becoming what we now think of as power metal.

Within this old school heavy metal meets early power metal sound the best thing about the record is its actual songs, which are quickly infectiously catchy and excellent across the board. The album opens with it's title track and from there they deliver memorable numbers one after the other. There are times where it feels that Heavens Gate were specifically writing with the live environment in mind, due to the sing-along nature of the lyrical hooks in tracks such as Can't Stop Rockin'. Best Days of My Life represents the near obligatory ballad of the album, but it's one of the better ones served up by power metal albums, while the unusually titled Fredless is a short instrumental. The rest is excellent old school heavy/power metal with excellent vocals, which makes Livin' in Hysteria one of the essential early albums of its style. You can't profess to have a decent knowledge of the German power metal scene if you haven't heard this.