helloween

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This first part of the page is dedicated to one of the best Power Metal bands ever...HELLoWEEN!

The Actual Members

Ex-Members

Here is some information about the guys from HELLoWEEN:->
Since 1986 - Present
Name: Michael Weikath
Full Name: Michael Ingo Joachim Weikath
Birthdate: August 7, 1962
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Height: 190 cm
Weight: 75 kg
Eye color: Blue
Hair Color: Black
Marital Status Single
Position in the band: Guitarist
*************************
From 1994 - Present
Name: Andi Deris
Full Name: Andreas Deris
Birthdate: August 18, 1964
Birthplace: Karlsruhe, Germany
Height: 178 cm
Weight: 68 kg
Eye color: Blue
Hair Color: Brown
Marital Status Single
Position in the band: Vocalist
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Since 1986 - Present
Name: Markus Grosskopf
Birthdate: September 21, 1965
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Height: 192 cm
Weight: 85 kg
Eye color: Blue
Hair Color: Brown
Marital Status Single
Position in the band: Bassist
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Since 1991 - Present
Name: Roland Grapow
Birthdate: August 30, 1959
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Height: 180 cm
Weight: 75 kg
Eye color: Green
Hair Color: Blond
Marital Status Married
Position in the band:Guitarist
****************************
Since 1994 - Present
Name: Ulrich Kusch
Birthdate: March 11, 1967
Birthplace: Aachen, Germany
Height: 181 cm
Weight: 65 kg
Eye color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Marital Status: Married
Position in the band: Drummer
*************************
Since 1986 to 1989
Name: Kai Hansen
Full Name: Kai Michael Hansen
Birthdate: January 24, 1968
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Height: 175 cm
Weight: 65 kg
Eye color: Brown
Hair Color: Blond
Marital Status: Married
Position in the band: Guitarist
**************************
Since 1987 to 1993
Name: Michael Kiske
Birthdate: January 24, 1968
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Height: 181 cm
Weight: 65 kg
Eye color: Blue
Hair Color: Blond
Marital Status: Single
Position in the band:Vocalist
*************************
Since 1986 to 1993
Name: Ingo Schwichtenberg
Birthdate: May 18, 1965
Death date: March 8, 1995
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Height: 185 cm
Weight: 78 kg
Eye color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Position in the band: Drummer
**************************
And now, some more pics of the guys...enjoy!
Andi Deris:

Roland Grapow:

Michael Weikath:

Markus Grosskopf:

Uli Kusch:

And here come some group pictures, some old, some new!

And now i would like to introduce you to the second band of this page. The one and only... GAMMARAY! Below, you can find the band's history, and some pictures as well. Have a nice trip! :O)

HISTORY OF THE BAND!
It was like a kick in the face when Kai HANSEN revealed his decision to leave Helloween in the end of 1988 to start something new because he was sick of the lousy atmosphere inside and around the band.
                Originally, Kai didn’t want to go on in a band but start a solo carreer instead with only vocalist Ralph Scheepers and him. But the recordings with the studio musicians went well surrounded with a relaxed atmosphere so that it began to show that there is gonna be a great new band: GAMMARAY. The debut album "Heading for Tomorrow" was released in January 1990 and has reached huge success especially in Germany and Japan. While Helloween changed their style of music a bit finding its creative climax in their best album "Chameleon", Kai together with his new band GammaRay sticked to the kind of music that made Helloween famous that time: melodic and bombastic power metal with positive and critical lyrics, fantastic guitar work and wonderful vocals.
                       It took some time until GammaRay entered the world’s stages for the first time because right after the recordings drummer Mathias Burchardt decided to quit as we wanted to concentrate on his studying completely. Finally, a new drummer was found in the person of Uli Kusch (now Helloween). With him, the line-up of GammaRay live world premiere was completed: Ralf Scheepers (vocals), Dirk Schlächter (guitar), Uwe Wessel (bass), Uli Kusch (drums) and of course mastermind Kai Hansen (guitars, vocals). Right in time with the tour a new EP called "Heaven can wait" was released in September 1990, including - beside a re-recorded version of the titletrack - one brand new song ("Who do...") and three songs that were left from the "Heading..." recording session.
              The tour was a big success especially in Japan. As a documentary a live video called "Heading for the East" was shot during the Tokyo show; was released in early 1991. (For a long time this video hasn’t been available but it was re-released in January 1998.)
              In February 1991 the band is rehearsing for the recordings of the second album in a small remoted house in Denmark. With some brand new songs in their bags GammaRay enter the studio under the control of producer Tommy Newton who did a fantastic job on the album called "Sigh no more" which has been released in September 1991. The style vastly differs from Heading’s one, and the lyrics are completely depressive as a result of the Gulf War raging that time. A tour followed and it became obvious that "Sigh no more" didn’t find the same appreciation as its predecessor. Especially the gigs in Germany were visited not as successful as the those of the previous tour.
              After the japanese tour in the beginning of 1992, GammaRay were in the media again. But this time with no good news for the fans: The rhythm section (Uli & Uwe) left because of personnel disagreemant and was replaced by a pretty young rhythm section of one of Hamburg’s demobands called "Anesthesia", Jan Rubach (bass) and Thomas Nack (drums). Besides, the band began to build their own studio which took quite a while so that the band didn’t start the recordings for their new album before 1993. The album called "Insanity & Genius" finally was released in June 1993. The album’s style comes closer to Heading’s one again as Kai seemed to realize that the best music he is able to compose is that bombastic speed metal. "I&G" was presented to the fans live on the socalled "Melodic Metal strikes back" festivals, all in all four shows presenting Helicon, Conception and Rage and GammaRay as co-headliners. A second live video titled "Lust for Live" was shot during the show in Hamburg which also has been released as a live CD called "The Power of Metal".
            Right before the preparations for the following CD, vocalist Ralf Scheepers was fired for several reasons. One was that Ralf was living around 500 miles away from Hamburg and therefore only was present on weekends. But the band wanted him to be present all the time to be involved in the songwriting and so on but Ralf didn’t want to move to Hamburg. So GammaRay decided to do without him in the future. The other thing was that Ralf wanted to become the vocalist of Judas Priest and therefore GammaRay didn’t know whether Ralf would stay in GammaRay or change to Judas Priest if he got the job. (As you all know he didn’t get the job; today Ralf has an own band again called "Primal Fear". The music is - who wonders - rather Priest-influenced)
            In May 1995 a masterpiece of melodic metal was released: The concept album "Land of the Free" as a mixture of the bombast of "Heading for Tomorrow" and the aggressiveness and heavyness of "Walls of Jericho". On this album there was again a cooperation with vocalist Michael Kiske who did the vocals for one complete song "Time to break free" and the chorus for the title track. The majority of the fans wanted Kai to get Michi as a full-time vocalist but Michi didn’t want to (and won’t do so in the future) as the music he is doing has become totally different from Heavy Metal. Kai and Dirk entrench themselves in their studio again in August to record the EP "Silent Miracles", an EP of four wonderful ballads. Fans say that Kai did his best ever vocal effort on "A While in Dreamland", a beautiful song with only piano and Kai’s voice. As the EP’s final mix couldn’t be done before the upcoming tour, the release of "Silent Miracles" was delayed to February 1996. As said, the band leaves for a long and excessive european tour in September turning the halls into party shacks. This was passed on in form of a live CD called "Alive ‘95" released in May 1996. In September 1996 the band haunted Spain again to please the fans with some more gigs together with Stratovarius and Rage. But right before the rehearsals for this tour Jan and Thomas decided to leave the band. Jan did so because Dirk wanted to return to bass (originally he was a bass player) by all means. There were thoughts that Jan could change to guitar as he himself always wanted to play the guitar in a band. But somehow he didn’t dare and left. So did Thomas because he completely wanted to concentrate himself on another music project he was running for quite a while. It was kind of Thomas still to drum the spanish tour in contrast to Jan who had to be replaced by guitarist Henjo Richter.
         The songwriting for the new album began in late 1996 with just Dirk and Kai in the band and it took them until February 1997 to find two new members: In the person of Daniel Zimmermann they found the best drummer they ever had. Henjo Richter was engaged as guitarist, a job he had already done very well on the spanish tour last year.
           With the new line-up completed again the band started the recordings for the new album in March 1997. The EP "Valley of The Kings" was released in May and "Somewhere out in Space", GammaRay’s best and most powerful album so far, was released end of August. The album immediately entered the charts in nearly every european country and in Japan of course. The european tour in September/October was visited very good (600 average) and it seems possible that the band returns onto european stages for some Summer-Metal-Meetings next year.

(above and below) Michael Kiske

(above) yes....Michael Kiske!

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