Band:	Helloween
Album:	The Dark Ride
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	2000
Guest review by:	Highlander

01. Beyond The Portal (Intro)
02. Mr. Torture
03. All Over The Nations
04. Escalation 666
05. Mirror Mirror
06. If I Could Fly
07. Salvation
08. The Departed (Sun Is Going Down)
09. I Live For Your Pain
10. We Damn The Night
11. Immortal
12. The Dark Ride
13. The Madness Of The Crowds [Japanese bonus]
14. Deliver Us From Temptation [Japanese bonus]

As the name tells, this album has a really dark atmosphere. Helloween takes you to the latest hour with this one, and the sound is heavy and mean. Andi Deris puts his voice a little lower, and you get a kind of creepy feeling when you listen to it. But the humor is there and tracks like 'Mr. Torture' is kind of funny to listen to. Specially the intro on this album is a masterpiece, once you have heard it, you know what it's all about, that's for sure.

This is the last Helloween album with Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch, who plays in a band called Masterplan nowadays. Perhaps it's the fact that the group atmosphere wasn's at the top when they did this album that influenced the sound. It's hard to tell. Personally I think that this album is way better than the new one, Rabbit Don's Come Easy.

If you shall compare this album to the older ones, this is much more experimental than albums like The Master of the Rings. The Dark Ride is similar to the Better Than Raw disc, you find the same new sound, but as I said before way darker than in Better Than Raw.

If you know the Helloween story, you know why The Dark Ride has this kind of sound. You can almost feel the anger that lies beneath the surface. But this makes the album very interesting musically, and I think that this album is one of the better ones. I think that it's important to develop the music, and not just play the same stuff year after year. If you want a power full, dark sound, this is an album that you must have!