The initial idea behind hooking up with Helloween guitarist Sascha Gerstner was to discuss his mindset when composing songs for the band’s new album, Keeper Of The Seven Keys – The Legacy. After all, founding guitarist Michael Weikath – one of the original songwriters for the now legendary Keeper I and II albums – has been singing Gerstner’s praises since he joined Helloween in 2003 for Rabbit Don’t Come Easy, replacing Roland Grapow. Having played with the ‘Weenie-inspired Freedom Call for a number of years, and clearly able to lock into that classic Helloween sound when composing for Keeper III, the natural assumption is that the German-born Gerstner was a diehard Helloween fan growing up, making his status in the band something of a dream come true for the man. Thus, it comes as a surprise when he reveals that Helloween didn’t figure all that much in his formative years as a musician. Rather than the basis for our chat being shot to hell, however, Gerstner offers a fresh look inside one of metal’s equally celebrated and maligned acts.

“I have to admit, I didn’t really grow up listening to Helloween,” Gerstner affirms. “That was a problem when I was doing interviews for Rabbit Don’t Come Easy because when I told people I was never a Helloween fan they thought I was just some young, arrogant guitarist. Everybody was expecing that I was this big Helloween fan and that joining the band was a dream come true because I was playing with my heroes, but it wasn’t like that. I was playing in cover bands when I was growing up, I was playing pop and rock music. I grew up with hard rock; I wasn’t into the heavy metal scene. So, I guess people thought I was saying ‘I don’t care about Helloween or their past; I’m the new guitar player anyway so it doesn’t matter.’ I knew the famous Helloween songs, of course, but I wasn’t a real fan of the band.”

With that in mind, it’s interesting to note that the songs Gerstner wrote for Keeper III – ‘The Invisible Man’, ‘Pleasure Drone’, ‘Silent Rain’, and contributions to ‘The King For 1,000 Years’ – is closer to the classic Keeper sound than anything the band has done previously. Granted, whether or not the new album lives up to the original Keeper legacy is a matter of personal taste, but the fact is Gerstner has been able to channel some of the magic back into the Helloween’s sound.

“I played some of those old songs on the last tour, so when it came to writing this album I knew what kind of a theme the guys were looking for,” says Gerstner, humble about his achievement. “Of course I couldn’t write a fusion or a jazz song for this band, but I didn’t worry about writing to fit that old style. There was a lot of free space to write. For example, ‘The Invisible Man’ is not a typical Helloween song but it fits into the concept.”

On the other side of the coin, Gerstner went out of his way to mirror the past with ‘Silent Rain’. He wrote the song as an inside joke, more or less updating the band’s call-to-arms, ‘Eagle Fly Free’, for 2005. Gerstner explains:

“Michael was telling me how much he hates the way bands are always stealing song ideas, notes and styles from other bands. I told him that even he does that sometimes, so as a joke I decided to make a really fast song that sounded like a Michael Weikath song. I told the other guys what I was doing, and I actually took some parts from ‘Eagle Fly Free’ and put them in ‘Silent Rain’. The funny thing is Michael never noticed how similar they were until we pointed it out (laughs). Even better was when we went to Japan for the promo tour, the press over there thought ‘Silent Rain’ was a Weiki song and he had to say ‘Uh, no, Sascha wrote it…’ (laughs). They were very surprised.”

Gerstner reveals he was more at ease recording Keeper III compared to Rabbit Don’t Come Easy – and thus felt comfortable enough to take the piss out of Weikath – because there was an actual sense of camaraderie within the band this time out.

“It was a strange situation with Rabbit Don’t Come Easy because Helloween wasn’t a real band,” Gerstner reveals. “I joined them and bam!, I was in the studio playing songs. Then we had problems with our (former) drummer (Mark Cross), so things were totally confused. I could feel it with the other guys; they were unsure about what was going to happen in the future. The Rabbit record was a big test phase because Weiki needed to have a guitar player in the band that he could get along with. It was a lot easier doing this album because Weiki and I discovered we got along as musicians and as people over the last two years. We couldn’t have done this album without that feeling.”

The members of Helloween have all gone on record saying the decision to dub the new opus a Keeper Of The Seven Keys album wasn’t made until they had heard the final mixes of the songs. In an interview with BW&BK; in the summer of 2003, however, Weikath revealed the possibility of a Keeper III was in fact in the cards. This suggests there was pressure on the band from the very beginning of the creative process.

“I know Markus (Grosskopf/bass) was totally focused on the writing because he’s one of the original band members,” says Gerstner. “I think there was a different kind of pressure on him compared to me, though. For me, I had to write the best songs I possibly could. I didn’t think about the whole Keeper thing because, as I said, I didn’t grow up worshipping that stuff. Markus and Weiki lived it, so there had to be some pressure there. You’d really have to ask them about that.”

It would seem that it wasn’t only the strength of the new material that influenced the decision to call the new album Keeper III, but the amount of material as well. The album features 80 minutes of music on two discs, touching on both the classic old school Helloween sound (disc 1) and a heavier, modern-edged grind (disc 2). And, ironically, the original idea of releasing Keeper I and II as a double album has been realized with Keeper III. As it turns out, feedback has been better than one might expect given the stigma attached to a band trying to seemingly live off past glories.

Gerstner: “Yeah, it’s been great and we’re really proud of it. Everywhere we went on the promotional trip, the media was so respectful. When we did the Rabbit album we had a lot of problems with people trying to provoke us, saying that Helloween wasn’t Helloween anymore and telling us that it would be better if we quit. They were very impolite in some cases, complaining about rabbit on the album cover, complaining about me having short hair, blah blah blah, but this time it’s totally different. People are talking about the music and the themes behind it. And the people that were giving us shit the last time, I had the feeling they were looking for something bad to say about the new record but they couldn’t find anything.”

“The thing is, we went through so much shit with the last record and the last tour, and the other guys went through shit with The Dark Ride as well, so I think we had to prove something to people with this record. We had to make a record where people didn’t say ‘Oh, they have another new drummer, another new lineup,’ as soon as they heard it. We had to prove that this lineup could make something really big, and I think we succeeded. It definitely feels that way.”

Watch for an interview with founding guitarist Michael Weikath, coming in January, in which the guitarist discusses living with the Keeper legacy for the past 18 years.