By Carl Begai
Helloween – “Save Us”
Album: Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part II (1988)
Helloween is one of the building blocks of my metal persona, and my permanent residency in the pumpkin patch truly started with “Save Us”. I have no idea why I missed out on Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part I, released in 1987 – because this love affair would have begun a year earlier – but I suspect it had to do with many (not all) European metal artists having limited exposure on the Canadian market if a major league label wasn’t involved. In any case, mega-hit “I Want Out” was making the rounds on Toronto’s / Canada’s video channels and pushed me to buy the album, but when Side 2 of the cassette I’d purchased for my car kicked in I was floored. “Eagle Fly Free” and “Dr. Stein” had impressed me, “I Want Out” was a no-brainer, but “Save Us”…. it grabbed me by the balls and wouldn’t let go.
The guitar shred was over the top – making me a Kai Hansen fan for life – and as a huge Queensrÿche fan who worshipped Geoff Tate as a vocal god thanks to Rage For Order and Operation: Mindcrime, hearing Michael Kiske storm in and lay waste to everything in his path with those high-end vocals was a religious experience. I still remember sitting in the Warden Woods parking lot after work with the song blasting from my pimped JBL speakers, thinking “Who the hell is Judas Priest?” And it’s mindblowing to hear Kiske sing just with just as much power if not more some 30 years later, with no loss of vocal range.
Interestingly, I found out only recently later that “Save Us” never appeared on the original vinyl LP release of Keeper II, but only on the CD version as a bonus track. It did, however, appear on the cassette tape version, which is odd but fortunate for me.
And, in 2016, Hansen performed the song live with Visions Of Atlantis singer Clémentine Delauney sharing lead vocals, and damn, they killed it. Unexpected, but brilliant.
