[Current & Culture] Helloween: Singing of Myths and Legends

Formed in the 1980s, Still Active Today
Pioneers of the Melodic Metal Subgenre

This year, the Halloween festival atmosphere seems unlike before. Eating, drinking, and having fun are not wrong, but on a day when many lives were lost, especially on the first anniversary, it is common sense to exercise restraint. It would be appropriate to take this opportunity to pray for the deceased together and for related ministries and local governments to check whether there is any risk of another safety accident occurring.

Now, Halloween inevitably brings to mind the Itaewon tragedy, but before that, the first name that came to my mind when I thought of Halloween was Helloween. Formed in Germany in the mid-1980s, they were a group representing European heavy metal. The 1980s were the heyday of heavy metal. Rockers with hair longer than most women wore tight leather clothes that seemed to leave no room to breathe and roamed the stage, and children who were fascinated by their music and listened to heavy metal all day long, abusing their eardrums, were called metal kids.

Even now, and back then as well, the center of popular music was the United States. Heavy metal was no exception, and if you had to name just one American metal band, it would be the metal-sounding 'Metallica.' In fact, although I mentioned them together as representatives of the US and Europe, by any standard, Metallica and Helloween are not comparable. In every aspect?album sales, concert revenue, chart performance, number of fans?Metallica is far superior. In fact, the band Megadeth is a more fitting competitor to Metallica.

Nevertheless, in my childhood, I often regarded Metallica and Helloween as the two pillars of heavy metal. Broadly speaking, both bands belong to the heavy metal genre, but Metallica epitomized the subgenre thrash metal, while Helloween cultivated the subgenre melodic metal (melodic speed metal). The former almost excludes melody, while the latter maximizes it, showing a stark contrast even in lyrics. Thrash metal mainly featured socially critical and realistic lyrics, whereas melodic metal sang of myths and legends. Helloween’s representative work, the 'Keeper of the Seven Keys' series of albums, is music based on fantasy themes like 'The Lord of the Rings.'

Just as Helloween was inferior to Metallica, melodic metal was always less popular than thrash metal. However, recently, for the first time in decades, the dominance between the two genres has shifted. Following Germany’s Helloween, melodic metal (now often called power metal) has been carried on by bands like Finland’s Stratovarious and Italy’s Rhapsody of Fire, attracting numerous followers, while thrash metal has shrunk like a declining city. Fantasy genres in novels and movies have also reached their heyday, especially among young people. Considering that culture reflects the times, it might be that people tired of criticizing and trying to change reality have completely turned away from it and now enthusiastically embrace reincarnation, fire-breathing dragons, and brave knights.

Amazingly, Helloween, formed in the mid-1980s, is still active. Readers who were fans in their youth should check out their recent concert videos, and for those who don’t know Helloween yet, I recommend their song 'Twilight of the Gods,' which can be considered the prototype of melodic metal. Let’s briefly escape reality by imagining ancient gods drinking the sunset and throwing lightning.

Lee Jae-ik, Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.